Nineteenth Sunday, Year
(B)
(1st. Kings 19:4-8;
Ephesians 4:30 – 5:2; John 6:41-51)
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Obviously it wasn’t easy to hear a man
say:
I am the bread
that came down from heaven;
we
would think him mad or laugh him out of court!
And so the first thing to notice about today’s Gospel reading is that the
Jews did not do any such thing. No! They had had some experience of Jesus: they
had frequently heard Him speak, closely observed His Personal bearing, and at
least heard of certain miraculous ‘works of His hands’. Consequently, they were not drawn to laughter
when such a man made a claim even so extraordinary as:
I am the Bread
that came down from Heaven.
In
fact, they felt a certain anxiety before Him and were even irritated with
themselves and each other for no apparently good reason; and so they started
complaining and grumbling among themselves, saying among other things ‘Come down
from heaven, indeed’!:
Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, ‘I have come down from
heaven?’
Why
did they not just laugh? What a
testimony it was to Jesus that they didn’t!
It
seems that only immediately involved professionals, that is, the pagan and
brutalised soldiers, along with the hypocritically self-righteous chief priests,
scribes and elders would ever be able to laugh at Him. As regards the ordinary people, indifference to anything that was not
directly pertinent to their own worldly concerns was their greatest fault
because it would eventually make them so very malleable, even ‘mob-able’, for
their leaders’ abuse.
There were others along with today’s murmuring Jews
however, who could better explain why they considered Jesus as One not to be
laughed at, as One Whom they -- as experienced and/or influential people --
found to be far different from any other man they had ever come across by reason
of a certain 'righteousness’ which made Him both mysteriously unique and yet,
somehow, dangerous; such, indeed, were the feelings of the wife of Pilate who
warned her husband:
Have nothing to do with that
righteous Man;
and
of the centurion who, having watched His suffering and death, spontaneously
glorified God saying:
This Man was
innocent beyond doubt!
It
was this Personal ‘something’ about Jesus – not just the fact that He had only
recently miraculously fed a very large crowd from a boy’s picnic lunch of a few
loves and fish – that was troubling the Jews speaking with Him at the present
moment; it was a disquietude that somehow something was being asked of them that
they were not able or ready -- each of them for personal reasons -- to give, and
so they complained in their own hearts, murmured and argued with their
companions, until Jesus found it necessary to say:
Stop murmuring among yourselves, no one can come to Me
unless the Father Who sent Me draw him.
That
was not the way to find the truth about, and understand the Person of, Our
Lord. Instead of complaints to bolster a
prejudiced opinion there had be a desire for the truth and a recognition that
the truth about Jesus could transcend the limits and the power of merely human
appreciation and reasoning. The truth
about Jesus could only be received, ultimately, as a gift – the Gift -- from the
Father.
And
because people must have a motive to impel them to make the necessary efforts to
seek such truth, Jesus added the words:
And I will
raise him up on the last day.
The
prophet Jeremiah had foretold that, in the days of the coming Messiah, all men
would be taught by God; and here Jesus -- quoting the prophet -- added what were
His very own mysterious and provocative words:
Everyone who listens to My Father
and learns from Him comes to Me.
And
this is the precise point for our own entry into the drama of today’s Gospel
reading!
The
Jews seeking Jesus were ‘murmuring’ among themselves about His words, (others
translate ‘murmuring’, as ‘complaining’, ‘grumbling’), and Jesus says quite
bluntly, ‘Stop that. Try to listen to My
Father (and your Father) and learn from Him.’
Notice that very carefully, People of God; for life’s
ultimate decision, Jesus advised that we listen to God and learn; not that we
discuss among ourselves in order to arrive at an agreed conclusion, which would
be both meaningless and ludicrous!!
Salvation is absolutely personal and relational; involving sincere
personal love for, and deep personal commitment to, God. Note that Jesus did not even say, ‘Discuss
it with the Father’, or, ‘Pray to the Father’, because such prayer can with many
people so easily become a matter of ‘discussing with’ or ‘talking to’ where they themselves
are in the driving seat. Therefore Jesus
concentrated attention on one word, listen to His (and their) Father:
that is, that they calm their heart in humble acceptance of its emptiness before
Him, and still their fevered imaginations and thoughts by unconditional trust in
Him. He advised them, and advises us, to
patiently wait upon the Father’s mercy and hope for His blessing; having only
our gratitude and praise to offer for His goodness.
And
now we come to a great truth about the world we live in, People of God: the
Father teaches all and always has taught all.
I am the bread of life.
Your ancestors ate manna in the desert, but they died. I am
the living bread that came down from heaven so that one may eat it and
not die.
See,
the Father was already teaching and preparing the Jews as they were being led
from their slavery in Egypt. He was
preparing them for Jesus’ coming, by teaching them to look for life in food from
heaven. They accepted that all food came
‘from heaven’ in so far as it was ultimately given them by God. But all such food originated from, and ended
up on, earth. They had to become
able to understand the need for living bread originating from heaven,
which alone could give them heavenly, eternal life.
There we have the clearest possible example of God’s
Providence with Israel and with us today.
From the beginning of Israel’s history there was a vital question of, and
need for, ‘bread from heaven’; and for over more than a thousand years God was
guiding Israel towards the possibility of their being able to understand and
appreciate something of truly living Bread coming from Heaven in the Person of
Jesus of Nazareth.
That
is the function and purpose of all earthly realities and experiences! They are all, under God’s Providence, able
to help us to an initial appreciation of the ultimate realities of heaven. That is what can make life, living, such a
wonderful experience: how can we, with
St. Paul, manage to take away the veil so lightly covering the beauty of
God?
Everyone who
listens to My Father and learns from Him comes to Me.
Listening to God means not just listening with our ears,
it involves the desire of our heart, it concerns the ‘background’ attention of
our mind ever hovering around God, and our willingness and ability to drop
earthly concerns when Jesus passes nearby:
They came to Jericho. And as He was leaving Jericho with
His disciples and a sizable crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus,
sat by the roadside begging. On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he
began to cry out and say, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.” And many rebuked him, telling him to be
silent. But he kept calling out all the more, “Son of David, have pity on
me.” Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”
So they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take courage; get up, He is
calling you.” He threw aside his cloak,
sprang up, and came to Jesus. Jesus said
to him in reply, “What do you want Me to do for you?” The blind man replied to
Him, “Master, I want to see.” Jesus told
him, “Go your way; your faith has saved you.” Immediately he received his sight
and followed Him on the way.
(Mark 10:46-52)
Bartimaeus there gave a most beautiful master-class in
the Christian art of listening, for and to God!
Such
listening can make life and our daily living it out a truly wonderful
experience, offering personal pointers to heavenly realities; and when we learn
to so look at, question and taste, the joys and sorrows, bitter and sweet things
of life, then everything becomes able to beckon us ever on and ever more
engagingly.
Jesus has yet one more piece of life-enhancing advice
for us though:
Whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the Bread
that I will give is My Flesh for the life of the
world.
Whoever eats this bread which is My Flesh … once again
we have one supremely important word which is, this time, ‘eats’.
And
notice, once again, that He does not say ‘receives’,
but ‘eats’. We have not only to
open our mouths or put forward our hands to receive such food, but we have to
‘eat’ it: some might say we have to ‘chew’ it.
Be that as it may, the essential point for our ‘eating’ is that we each
of us recognize the food as essential to, necessary for, my very life. It is not to be anonymously received, but
personally eaten with joy and gratitude.
And according to the book of Proverbs, having been generously given such
food, we should give a thought to our returning like for like, in other words we
should be stirred to want to give ourselves in return to the Lord Who
gives us all.
My
dear People of God, living such a life, full of intriguing invitations and
loving calls, receiving such daily Personal Food, we are most certainly not
alone on our journey through life, but are developing, as the years pass by, an
ever greater companionship and intimacy with One Who is of Himself and wills to
become for us personally the Love, Truth, and Life of our life. May we participate in this Holy Mass and
hopefully receive Holy Communion with such faith and love as to experience that
intimacy and companionship as never before.
Amen.
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