Nineteenth Sunday in OT B 2024
Growing up, I was one of six children to Adam and Grace Schwartz. We lived on Inglewood Drive in the city of Rochester. Nothing fancy about our house. Three bedrooms – one for my parents, one for my three sisters, and one for my two brothers and myself. One bathroom. My dad worked for the Rochester Telephone Co for 45 years, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. She did have six children in nine years, and so she had plenty to do. My dad was a conscientious provider. None of his six children look underfed. Education was an important priority for my dad, and he was a strict disciplinarian.
I certainly loved my parents
and, as I say, my dad worked extremely hard to provide for his large
family. As a youth, I depended on my dad
to provide whatever we needed, and that he did.
As I grew older, my relationship
with my dad matured and I saw my dad as much more than a good provider. I saw him as a person who loved and needed to
be loved. I grew to experience more the
joys and challenges of his life.
I tell you about my
relationship with my dad as a way of explaining the sixth chapter of John’s
Gospel that has been the Gospel in the Sundays of this summer.
The sixth chapter begins with
Jesus feeding the five thousand with the miraculous miracle of the
multiplication of the five barley loaves and two fish. The disciples of Jesus thought that this is
as good as it gets. And so, they
followed Jesus to get more food and have their physical hunger needs satisfied
and their bellies filled.
After the feeding of the five
thousand, Jesus is seeking to lead his disciples into a deeper relationship
with him. Instead of just being a good provider
to their physical hunger, Jesus is now tapping into a deeper relationship with
his disciples, Jesus now says: “I am the
Bread of Life.” Jesus is now speaking to
the deepest hunger of the human heart – their spiritual hunger for God. Jesus wishes to enter a deeper relationship
with his disciples – more than a worker of miracles to satisfy their physical
hunger.
Just as a youth, l primarily
looked at my dad as an excellent provider to the many needs of his large
family, as I grew older and more mature, I had a deeper relationship with my
dad and saw him much more than just as a provider but as a person who loves and
wishes to be loved.
When Jesus tells us in the
sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, “I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE. He who eats my flesh will never hunger. He who drinks my blood will never thirst.” Jesus is sharing is divine life with us in
the mystery of the Eucharist so that we can experience God’s unconditional love
for us.
Just so, when our
relationship with God begins to mature, we begin to understand our calling to
care for God’s creation. We are prompted
to show mercy for those struggling in life.
We value forgiving others, having experienced God’s forgiveness ourselves. We become free to be generous with the
blessings we have received, humbled by the truth that everything we have was gifted
to us and that our treasure is in heaven.
As we seek our mature
relationship with Jesus in our lives, we wrestle with questions and doubts even
as the first disciples questioned who Jesus was for them. In their murmuring, the first disciples
said: “Is this not Jesus, the son of
Joseph? Do we not know his mother and
his father? Then how can he say, ‘I have
come down from heaven.’ Maybe that is our equivalent of the Mass
becoming such a routine part of our lives. Homilies cease to inspire. We have lost the wonder. We have lost the mystery. The Mass is too ordinary, too routine.
It is worth pondering whether
we spend more time murmuring and complaining or whether our time is spent with
gratitude with the blessings of life?
We ask for the grace to see
with the eyes of faith. As a Eucharistic
people, we are fed and nourished with the bread of life and the cup of
salvation; our lives are transformed by the love of Jesus within us. The
Israelites were amazed at the manna that came down from heaven. May we be more amazed with Jesus, the Bread
of Life, that has come down from heaven.
Indeed, this is the day the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in
it.
The process of Eucharistic
conversion for all of us is the deepening of the awe, the expectancy of being
fed by the bread of life and the chalice of salvation.
If the Eucharist is only a
Sunday morning thing, if there is anger and hatred in our hearts toward others,
if our attention is only mixed at best, if we are hassled about many things, we
have not opened our hearts to the transforming love of God revealed in the
Eucharistic mystery.
To unlock the mystery of
John’s Bread of Life discourse from his sixth chapter, we need to plummet the
last line of today’s Gospel. “The Bread
I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” Jesus’ crucified body is bread? It is hard to imagine how Jesus’ sacrifice on
the cross actually feeds us. The cross
is a place of glory for Jesus. It is on
the cross that Jesus will draw all people to himself.
For Jesus, his death on the
cross was the pathway to resurrection.
For us, the great mystery of our faith is that in dying we are born to
eternal life. In dying to ourselves in
the crosses of our lives, enables to live more freely in the service and love
of others in praise of God.
The sacred mystery of the
Eucharist is the connection between the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross in giving
his live so that we may live sharing in His risen life. Save us, Savior of the
world, for by your cross and resurrection you have set us free.
Have a blessed day.
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