Bread of Life – Lift up your eyes
You might remember that although we are in Year B of our three year cycle of Gospel readings from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we are taking a summer break from Saint Mark’s Gospel to spend a few weeks in Saint John’s Bread of Life Discourse in John chapter 6. This portion of scripture is so special and important to Catholics, because these scriptures are essential to our understanding of Christ in the Eucharist.
Last Sunday, we saw the power of God in Christ Jesus with the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Jesus reveals himself as the fulfillment of what Elisha the prophet prefigured.
The Catechism defines a prophet as someone sent by God to form the people in the hope of salvation. Today, Jesus is established as not simply A Prophet, but The Prophet who the people always knew to expect. The one who would reveal clearly how we can do what God desires.
More than that, Jesus says he is the bread of life from heaven. He is the reality to which manna pointed.
Next week, think about manna as you hear the people asking “who is this?” When the manna first came down, the people said “man hu?” which means, what is this… We still ask that question about Jesus and about the Eucharist. What is this? Who is this?
I remember when I attended my first mass as an adult on Christ the King Sunday in 2006. I was very much skeptical of all the kneeling. I went along with what they were doing, because it seemed like the right thing to do, but I still was very much saying “man hu?” inside. Then, as I knelt there, I had this profound realization that if this bread and wine truly become the body and blood of Jesus Christ, then of course we would kneel. Of course we would adore and give thanks and praise to God.
Through the presence of the Eucharist, God began to give me an answer to “man hu?” God began to show me that Jesus is the manna from heaven. I knew that Jesus is the bread of life, but God began to give me the gift of faith in Jesus Christ with us in the Eucharist.
I wasn’t sure yet, but it began to make sense. I began to see that, even if Jesus meant everything symbolically, the fact that billions of Christians have been praying constantly something like nineteen hundred and ninety years that the bread and wine would become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ should mean that it happens. That’s what God does – listens to our prayers.
As The Prophet, Jesus reveals to us what God wants from us. He reveals what is the work of God, the Opus Dei. The work of God is faith. The work of God is to believe in the one God sent. Not just to believe, but to believe in. Not just to think he is not a liar, but to put our trust in him.
Despite all the miracles, the Children of Israel struggled to trust in God. “Oh, we should have just died in Egypt, at least we had food there!” How quickly they forget that when they had food (and they didn’t have enough for all the brick-making, straw-gathering, and mud-digging work they were doing), they hungered for freedom and justice, and permission to worship.
The people who followed Jesus into the wilderness were much more interested in an unending meal ticket than in receiving eternal life.
And us? We’re the same. We complain, and we forget what God has done for us, and we focus on material goods instead of spiritual goods. Many who protested the closing of churches during COVID don’t bother to come now, when they are free to come and always welcome.
When we pray, we pray for issues of health, and finances. We pray for our work and school, for rain, for safety, for success, and for victory at athletic events. Of course we need those things – well, some of them anyway.
How often do we pray for someone’s soul? How often do we pray for spiritual growth? We praise God when we receive the healing or the rain or the work that we need – how often do we praise God for giving us the gift of greater faith, hope, or love?
It would be beneficial for all of us to lift up our eyes from our work and our worries and our entertainments to give thanks specifically for spiritual goods. It would be beneficial for us to pray specifically for spiritual healing and prosperity for ourselves and others. It would be beneficial to give thanks for the gift of difficulties that made us grow spiritually.
So, let’s lift up our eyes, and do the work of God. We work for food, but then what? What’s the point? Are we really just working for the weekend, and to make ends meet? What are we working FOR? What is our purpose?
As Father mentioned last week, we are all called to holiness. Saint Josemaría founded Opus Dei, which means “work of God” to help people seek Christian perfection in everyday life and work. Saint Josemaría wrote:
You hear people saying sometimes that there are fewer miracles nowadays. Might it not rather be that there are fewer people living a life of faith? … We must have complete faith in the one who saves us, in this divine Doctor who was sent with the express purpose of curing us, and the more serious or hopeless our illness is the stronger our faith has to be. We must learn to acquire the divine measure of things, never losing our supernatural outlook, and realizing that Jesus makes use also of our weaknesses to reveal his glory.[1]
God desires to do miracles in our lives, and the greatest of those miracles is to make us holy.
The work of God, the work we do to cooperate with God’s desire, is to believe in Christ Jesus, who is the bread come down from heaven.
Let’s get to it.
