1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 34; Psalm 34; Ephesians 4:30 ̶ 5:2 JOHN 6:41-51
KEY VERSE: “The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (v 51).
Sometimes we feel like Elijah in today’s First Reading. We want to lie down and die, keenly aware of our failures, that we seem to be getting no better at doing what God wants of us.
We can be tempted to despair, as the prophet was on his forty-day journey in the desert. We can be tempted to “murmur” against God, as the Israelites did during their forty years in the desert.
Yet if we believe, if we seek Him in our distress, He will deliver us from our fears, as we sing in today’s Psalm.
If you listen to talk radio stations especially on the weekends, they are filled with programs focused on health and nutrition. These programs feature doctors, nutritionists, and other health care professionals speaking about the benefits of certain vitamins, supplements, and nutritional products that they are endorsing and offering for sale.
There are products that will improve memory, lessen body fat, restore youthful vigour and vitality, reduce cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, slow the aging process, enhance heart health, eliminate joint pain, promote more restful sleep, relieve digestive disorders, and more. By the end of such programs, listeners are led to believe that the product offered is just what they need.
Suppose that there was a product that promised more than all those supplements currently on the market. Suppose there was an advertised product that guaranteed that those who took it would live forever. That outrageous claim would be met with scepticism, disbelief, and an investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
In this Sunday’s Gospel (John 6:41-51) Jesus offers a “product” that makes just such a claim. Jesus offers “the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.” Is it any wonder that “Jews murmured” when they heard this claim of Jesus? A claim made even more incredible when Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
We have heard those words of Jesus so often that we may not appreciate the unbelievable statement that Jesus is making – eat this bread, live forever!
The bread that Jesus offers us is a relationship with him. A relationship nourished by Word and Eucharist. Such a relationship cannot be broken by death.
Just as the relationship between Jesus and his heavenly Father was not ended by his death on the cross, so our relationship with Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life, is not ended by our death. It continues; it does not die. It lives on!
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever.” That claim makes unbelievers murmur – and believers rejoice! At the altar in every Eucharist, the angel of the Lord, the Lord himself (see Exodus 3:1-2), touches us. He commands us to take and eat His flesh given for the life of the world (see Matthew 26:26).
Our spiritual journey, just as any journey requires nourishment, thus God has made that nourishment available to each and every one of us through His Word and the Holy Eucharist. We must be willing to accept his gifts for the journey that lies ahead,– to get up and continue on the journey we began in baptism, to the mountain of God, the kingdom of heaven.
He will give us the bread of life, the strength and grace we need — as He fed our spiritual ancestors in the wilderness and Elijah in the desert.
So let us stop grieving the Spirit of God, as Paul says in today’s Epistle, in another reference to Israel in the desert (see Isaiah 63:10).
Let us say to God as Elijah did, “Take my life.” Not in the sense of wanting to die. But in giving ourselves as a sacrificial offering — loving Him as He has loved us, on the cross and in the Eucharist.
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