Today’s Readings are yet another affirmation of our ancestors’ faith and trust in the Lord’s never-failing love and care. He is indeed a Provider par excellence; He sustains us, and never lets us down. May generations believe that He is our everything, and nothing shall we want!
In the First Reading (1 Kings 19: 4-8), the Prophet Elijah, threatened by king Ahab and queen Jezebel, feels forsaken and desperate. He goes into exile and, when exhausted from walking no end, sits under a broom tree, crying, ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life.’ He would have readily died in the desert where his ancestors had wandered for forty years; but God had a different plan. The angel of the Lord urged him to rise, feed himself and get going. The prophet then went to mount Horeb (also called Sinai), where he spent forty days and forty nights.
They say, man proposes; God disposes. Elijah’s cry ‘Satis est, Domine, satis est,’ was also the cry of so many holy men after him, including our own St Francis Xavier. But then, God turned the situation to Elijah’s advantage. The prophet felt spiritually renewed on God’s mount. That was the soil that his ancestors had stepped on and were given the Torah, of which Elijah was presently the depositary and interpreter. It was the site where God had appeared to Moses; and Elijah was now defending the principles of the Mosaic Covenant, against the prophets of Baal, who were on the royal payroll.
In the Gospel (Jn 6: 41-51) we have the New Testament counterpart of several episodes of the Old Testament. The Bread of Life discourse that began on the seventeenth Sunday of this year is now in its third instalment. Today, we hear Jesus say, ‘I am the Bread which came down from heaven.’ The message that the angel gave Elijah a millennium earlier is now perfected. Truly, ‘the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever’ (Is 40: 8).
Picking up from we left off last Sunday, we know from today’s Gospel text that the Jews murmured at Jesus, because of His unprecedented claims. They checked His credentials – ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know…’? – but somehow, they failed to discern His divine origin. Jesus, the Son of God, did not stop to placate the people but went ahead and reiterated His message, saying: ‘No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.’
Jesus wanted to let the people know that they needed a special grace to come to Him. It was not a privilege that they could bestow upon themselves; rather, God had to favour them with the required grace. It did not come easy. Hence, Jesus did not labour the point but rather restated it very categorically: ‘I am the Living Bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever.’
The Living Bread is not our everyday physical bread, which anyway cannot sustain us; it is spiritual bread that is life-giving… Next Sunday, Jesus will go a step further and explain that, really speaking, the bread He gives for the life of the world is His flesh. This is not a message for the faint-hearted but for those who have total faith and trust in the True God. It preannounces the institution of the Holy Eucharist – that ineffable Sacrament in which Our Lord gives Himself to us as the heavenly Food and Drink.
We Catholics must consider ourselves extremely privileged and thankfully share in such an exalted Mystery. We who have been thus ‘sealed for the day of redemption’ ought not to disappoint the Holy Spirit of God. In fact, in preparation for that day, St Paul in the Second Reading (Eph 4: 30; 5: 2) exhorts us to give up all bitterness, wrath, clamour, slander, malice; and to be kind, tender-hearted, forgiving and imitators of God. Finally, he says, we must ‘walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.’
Does that smack of weakness? Not at all. And what Jesus said to St Paul, He says to us today: ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Cor 12: 9-11). All that we need to do is to believe in the Real Presence of the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Lo and behold, He who ‘died’ two millennia ago is still the Living Bread. He is alive!… And our faith, how alive is it?
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