Reflections on the Sunday Readings for 8/9/09

You can find the full scripture readings at http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/080909.shtml




We are in the midst of the "Bread of Life" discourse by the writer of the Gospel of John. Last week we heard about the Israelites who were grumbling about food and this week we hear the crowd murmuring about who Jesus says he is. Murmuring normally shows shortsightedness more than being stubborn. The Jews were murmuring because they didn't understand who Jesus was, they say: "Is this not... the son of Joseph?" They were having trouble understanding Jesus as more than they saw in front of them. Jesus, meanwhile, is trying to teach the crowd that he is the way to eternal life and that we can never attain eternal life on our own - it is always God's gift.

In the readings this Sunday we are reminded how persistent God is in bringing us to new and eternal life. We hear about Elijah in the first reading, who is completely worn out (we can all identify with that feeling!). God sends him an angel twice to feed him and send him to continue his journey to Horeb, "the mountain of God". In the Gospel Jesus continues to reveal himself as the bread sent by God to nourish them (and us) for the road to eternal life. Jesus gives his life so that we might have new life. We are surprised to find out that Jesus himself, is the "bread... from heaven," and that this is both the promise and fulfillment of the eternal life for which we all long. Jesus tells us he is "the living bread" and when we share in this Bread we "will live forever."

God shows his persistence in bringing us to new and eternal life by sending the Son who gives his life for us. But this is not without cost. The bread of life is the bread of self-sacrifice. To eat the bread of life is to eat the bread of suffering. When we encounter Jesus by eating the bread of life we take Jesus' life of self-giving. That is why the gospel is so difficult, and why the Jews are really murmuring. We, too, must die so that we might live forever.

adapted from "Living Liturgy", Liturgical Press, 2008

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Reflections on the Sunday Readings for 8/2/09

You can find the full scripture readings at http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/080209.shtml

Today's reflection comes from a commentary by Theophylact (1050-1109), theologian and language scholar, studied at Constantinople. He taught rhetoric and was tutor to the imperial heir presumptive: hence his treatise on the Education of Monarchs. In 1078 he became archbishop of Ochrida in Bulgarian territory.

“I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”
John 6:35

Our ancestors ate manna in the desert; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” Wishing to persuade Christ to perform the kind of miracle that would provide them with bodily nourishment, the people in their insatiable greed called to mind the manna.

What was the reply of our Lord Jesus, the infinite wisdom of God? It was not Moses who gave you bread. In other words, “Moses did not give you the true bread. On the contrary, everything that happened in his time was a prefiguration of what is happening now.

Moses represented God, the real leader of the spiritual Israelites, while that bread typified myself, who have come down from heaven and who am the true bread which gives genuine nourishment.”

Our Lord refers to himself as the true bread not because the manna was something illusory, but because it was only a type and a shadow, and not the reality it signified.

This bread, being the Son of the living Father, is life by its very nature, and accordingly gives life to all. Just as earthly bread sustains the frail substance of the flesh and prevents it from falling into decay, so Christ quickens the soul through the power of the Spirit, and also preserves even the body for immortality. Through Christ resurrection from the dead and bodily immortality have been gratuitously bestowed upon the human race.

Jesus said to the people: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall never hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” He did not say “the bread of bodily nourishment,” but “the bread of life.”

For when everything had been reduced to a condition of spiritual death, the Lord gave us life through himself, who is bread because, as we believe, the leaven in the dough of our humanity was baked through and through by the fire of his divinity.

He is the bread not of this ordinary life, but of a very different kind of life which death will never cut short.

Whoever believes in this bread will never hunger, will never be famished for want of hearing the Word of God; not will such a person be parched by spiritual thirst through lack of the waters of baptism and the consecration imparted by the Spirit.

The unbaptized, deprived of the refreshment afforded by the sacred water, suffer thirst and great aridity. The baptized, on the other hand, being possessed of the Spirit, enjoy its continual consolation.

(Commentary on John’s Gospel: PG 123, 1297.1301)

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