In today’s world there is much strife and sin, yes. These many manifestations of strife can at times capture our attention to the point where we begin to think it is the prevailing reality of society or of human nature. However, the truth is that each person is created in the likeness of God. While each of us has inherited the ‘sin of Adam’ and share in the loss of holiness and justice, we also are recipients of the immeasurable gift of salvation won for us by Jesus Christ.
The Church teaches both the universality sin and the universality of salvation. (see Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church #120 – 123) For Christians, we must always keep our eyes fixed on Christ, our hope and our salvation.
In today’s readings form the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, we hear accounts from our shared history of salvation. We see another occasion of people only seeing the difficulty and strife, rather than turning to God in faith. From the Book of Exodus we hear how the Israelites complained to Moses for dragging them out into the desert to die of famine. How quickly they forgot they are in the desert precisely because God heard their prayers and led them out of slavery in Egypt. Never-the-less, God is always faithful; patient and full of mercy. Thus the Good God sends quail in the evenings and manna in the mornings to feed to people during their sojourn to the promised Holy Land. God, for whom nothing is impossible, sent the Israelites Bread from Heaven.
Today’s Gospel is a continuation of the multiplication of loaves account we read last Sunday, and the beginning of the Bread of Life discourse from John’s Gospel.
After the people were fed, Jesus and the disciples depart later that evening for Capernaum. The next morning, the people go in search of Jesus. Upon finding him Jesus knows their hearts and says to them: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” Once again, the people see the worldly reality, and fail to see at the level of faith. Jesus further instructs them: “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”
Jesus demonstrates the patience and love of God as he continually walks with the people, instructing them to see the world and events around them with the eyes of faith, but especially to recognize him for who he is, the Son of God. After the people recall how Moses fed the people in the desert, Jesus opens their eyes in his never-failing effort to open their hearts: “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. … I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in my will never thirst.”
Jesus is the antidote to our sinfulness and the sole cause of our salvation. God is surely saddened by our sins, but is resolute in continually calling us to new life and in Christ has restored our possibility of living in holiness and justice. We have a responsibility to humbly acknowledge our sins while at the same time striving daily to be more conformed to Christ in a proper understanding that it is God’s will that everyone be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:4) Again, St. John teaches that “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:17)
St. Paul is quick to call attention to this in our second reading today from the Letter to the Ephesians. In Paul’s words: “we are to put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.” (Ephesians 4:22-24)
“Put on the new self”. This is the proper and constant work of the mature Christian. In the Eucharist, we receive the Bread of Life, Jesus Christ. We RECEIVE … The Risen Christ, gives himself to us through his Body and Blood, that he may live in us and we may live in him.
The Israelites said to Jesus: “Sir, give us this bread always.” And this, Jesus has done. And through his passion, death and resurrection, Christ is capable of perpetually giving himself to us in each and every Eucharist. It is the will of the Father that we believe in Jesus as his only begotten Son. It is the will of the Father that through His Son, Jesus Christ, we be saved.
St. Matthew tells us that the weeds and the wheat will grow together in this life. (see Matthew 13:24-30) Jesus, who became the grain of wheat who fell to the earth and died has born the greatest fruit of all, giving life to the world. Let us not become too obsessed with the weeds, but rather leave this ‘sorting out’ to the Lord, and live our life in the world in conformity to Jesus, who makes us new. Let us live in the world as ground wheat ourselves, conformed to Christ, giving life and bearing good fruit as we work to advance the Kingdom of God here on earth.
When the sin and strife press in upon us, we have only to recall the words of Jesus: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”
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