19th Sunday Year B 2021

Nineteenth Sunday, Year (B)

(1 Kings 19:4-8; Ephesians 4:30 – 5:2; John 6:41-51)

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Obviously, it must not have been easy to hear a man say:

            I am the bread that came down from heaven;

today, we would think such a man mad and 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 experience of Jesus: having frequently heard Him speak, closely observed His personal bearing, and at least heard reports of certain miraculous ‘works of His hands’.  Consequently, they were not drawn to laughter when He made a claim even so extraordinary as:

            I am the Bread that came down from Heaven.

The truth was that they felt a certain anxiety in His presence, and becoming irritated with themselves and each other for no apparently good reason they started complaining and grumbling among themselves, voicing His words and their own apprehension:  ‘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 the hypocritically self-righteous chief priests, scribes and elders would ever be able to laugh at Him, but their laughter was always intentional: being meant to protect and serve their ever-increasing fear for their own security with regard to the Roman occupying authorities and the subservient esteem of their own people. 

As regards the ordinary people, indifference to anything that was not directly pertinent to their own worldly concerns was their greatest fault, because it made them so very malleable, so very ‘mob-able’, for those hypocritical decriers and increasingly deadly enemies of Jesus.

There were some others, however, less public figures indeed, but familiar with and closely observant of those murmuring Jewish leaders, who made known their own reasons for believing most seriously that Jesus was not One to be laughed at: He was One Whom they -- as both widely experienced and secretly observant, individuals -- found to be far different from any other man they had ever come across: for them, there was a mysterious Personal 'righteousness’ which signaled Jesus out as rather awesome or very 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 Jesus’ suffering and death, spontaneously acknowledged his own sinfulness in the face of such righteousness 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 secretly troubling the Jews speaking with Him in our Gospel reading; it was a suspicion, indeed, even a certain heartfelt disquiet, that somehow, something, was being asked of them that they were not able or ready -- each of them for personal reasons -- to answer, and so being disturbed in their own hearts, they complained, murmured, and argued among themselves, 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.

Instead of complaints to bolster a prejudiced opinion, there had to be a desire to know God’s truth and a willingness to recognize that such spiritual truth about Jesus, His work and His teaching, might stretch or even transcend the limits of their earthly wits  and appreciation.  The truth about Jesus could only be received, ultimately, as a gift – the Gift -- from the Father.

And it was in order to afford them a motive  that might induce them to welcome and embrace such a gift that Jesus added words of power:

            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 – having quoted 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 that, dear People of God, 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 said, quite bluntly, ‘Stop that.  Try to listen to your God and My Father and learn from Him.’

Notice those words very, very carefully, People of God; Jesus advised that, for life’s important decisions, we try to listen to God and learn from Him, not that we argue with ourselves or others.  Salvation is absolutely personal and relational; involving a truly humble awareness of God’s presence in our life and our need of Him for fulfilment.

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’ or ‘praying’ with themselves firmly seated in the driving seat.  Therefore, Jesus concentrated attention on one word, listen to their God and His Father: that is, that they should calm their heart by humble acceptance of its need 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:  

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.

The Father was already teaching and preparing the Jews as they were being led from 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 sustained life 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.

For over more than a thousand years God had been guiding Israel towards the possibility of their being able to understand and appreciate something of truly living Bread coming from Heaven; and such, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, is His guiding Providence for us today!

There is a spiritual purpose “attached to”, “involved in” our earthly existence and life’s experiences!   They are all, under God’s Providence, able to guide us -- if welcomed  prayerfully and humbly -- to an initial appreciation of the ultimate realities of heaven.   That is what can make our present every-day life and living, such a wonderful experience:  that is how we, with St. Paul, can manage to see behind 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:

As Jesus 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 Jesus 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 positively ‘eat’ it, as some might rightly say we have to ‘chew’ it.  The essential point of our ‘eating’ is that we each of us recognize the food as essential to, necessary for, my very life.   Moreover, it is not to be anonymously received, but eaten with heart-felt joy and gratitude for the One Who so generously gives it.  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.