The Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time [B]
I Kings 19:4-8  +  Ephesians 4:30-5:2  +  John 6:41-51

“… the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

At the start of John 6, as we heard two Sundays ago, “the people … were going to come and carry [Jesus] off to make Him king” because of the miraculous signs that He worked.  By contrast, today’s Gospel Reading is where John 6 turns south.  This is where the crowds begin their murmuring against Jesus.  They begin raising objections to His claims.  This is the murmuring and objecting that will lead to most of the crowd abandoning Jesus by the chapter’s end, as we will hear two Sundays from now.

At the very beginning of today’s Gospel Reading, “The Jews murmured against Jesus because He said, ‘I am the bread that came down from Heaven’”.  Their reason for murmuring is not so much that Jesus is simply claiming to be some sort of “bread”.  They seem to accept that claim of Jesus as an innocent sort of metaphor:  someone who is bread offers nourishment, somewhat like a parent in our own day being called a “breadwinner”.  Jesus calling Himself bread seems just a metaphor, so that’s not what bothers the Jews.

Instead, when Jesus declares “I am the bread that came down from Heaven”, what really bothers the Jews is that Jesus is claiming to come down from Heaven.  They murmur:  How can this be when we know his father and mother?  He’s one of them, not someone sent down from Heaven.  But Jesus does not bother long responding to this concern.

Jesus moves forward by doubling down on His real claim, which has at this point passed right over the crowd’s heads.  More important than the fact that He’s come down from Heaven is the question of who He is.  Towards the end of today’s Gospel passage, Jesus gives us three answers to the question of who He is.

Jesus first declares, “I am the Bread of Life.”  Then He describes Himself as “the bread that comes down from Heaven so that one may eat it and not die.”  Third, Jesus calls Himself “the living bread”.  In all three answers, Jesus explains that He is not just nourishment.  He hasn’t just come down from Heaven in order to fill stomachs.  It’s not bread for the stomach, but bread for the soul.  Jesus is a bread that offers a life that’s stronger than death.

Then Jesus reveals the awesome Mystery of His identity further.  In the very last phrase of today’s Gospel passage, Jesus stakes the claim that makes or breaks His disciples.  He claims not just that He is bread, and not just that as bread He gives a life stronger than death.

Jesus declares:  “the bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.”  Jesus is not just “bread”.  He is not just “food for the hungry”.  Jesus is not just bread that offers life.  Jesus is not just bread that strengthens you to survive death.  Jesus is the divine Word made Flesh, and His Flesh is the bread that He “will give for the life of the world.”  This is the heart of John 6.

His Flesh is bread.  Jesus’ sermon on the Bread of Life makes clear just how radical the Holy Eucharist is.  The Sacrament of the Eucharist is not just a symbol or sign.  The Sacrament of the Eucharist is the Body and Blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, the divine Word made Flesh.

Those who murmured when Jesus said that He had come down from Heaven are going to murmur even worse against this claim of Jesus:  that the bread that He will give is His Flesh.  Of course, you can read the rest of the story by taking your Bible and reading the whole of John 6.  This would be especially helpful this year, because next Sunday the passage from John 6 that we would usually hear will be displaced by the August 15^th celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Assumption.

Jesus gives us His flesh in order to give us life in this fallen world.  This is the life that is divine, which is to say that it’s self-sacrificial.  Jesus offers us this life in the Holy Eucharist.  Jesus asks us to live in daily life with the depth of self-sacrifice that He offered on the Cross.  The strength to live such a life of self-sacrifice comes from this very Bread of Life.

Thursday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Numbers 20:1-13  +  Matthew 16:13-23
August 5, 2021

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Today’s Gospel passage is well-known for revealing Jesus’ intention of founding His Church on the rock of faith, personified both in the individual Simon Peter, and in the office of the papacy.  What sometimes is overlooked is what immediately follows.  These latter verses also reveal something important about the Church, about the office of the papacy, and about the men who hold that office.

When Jesus “began to show His disciples that He must” suffer and be killed, the newly appointed Peter begins to “rebuke” Jesus!  The word “rebuke” is not a soft one.  But Jesus immediately and forcefully corrects Peter, revealing to us that Peter’s office does not pertain to the personal concerns, insights or doubts of him who holds the office.  Nor is the officeholder of the papacy unable to err.

Peter’s error here counters the profession of faith that he had made, after which Jesus named him “Peter”.  Jesus at that point praised Peter’s confession of faith, and pointed out to him something key by stating:  “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father”.  Contrast these words with what Jesus says following Peter’s scandalous rebuke:  “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do”.

This contrast between the divine and the human is heard in the juxtaposition of Peter’s confession of Jesus and Jesus’ rebuke of Peter.  Peter’s confession is of Jesus’ divinity.  But Peter is rebuked because he refuses to accept Jesus’ humanity as the means of Jesus’ mission.  Each of us needs to accept Jesus’ mission of offering His Body and Blood on the Cross.  Through this mission, Jesus will fully offer divine life to those of us who place our faith in Him.

St. John Vianney, Priest
Numbers 13:1-2,25—14:1,26-29,34-35  +  Matthew 15:21-28
August 4, 2021

“Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”

When the Israelites entered the Promised Land after the Exodus, they met up with the Canaanites, whom they considered to be wicked and godless, a race of people that they should exterminate.  This outlook persisted until the time of Jesus.  In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus explains that this outlook cannot be held by His followers.

The woman in the Gospel passage is a Canaanite.  She had enough faith in Jesus to ask Him to release her daughter from a demon.  But then Jesus says a shocking thing to the woman:  “It is not right to take the food of the sons and daughters and throw it to the dogs.”  These words do not represent Jesus’ own thoughts, but we see—because of the response that Jesus draws out of the woman, and because of Jesus’ action in reply—the lesson that Jesus has for His followers.

In the midst of our culture today, Jesus says to us, “Love is not exclusively for those who are dear to us.”  Jesus teaches that we must love those we may consider enemies, and pray for those who persecute us.

Tuesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Numbers 12:1-13  +  Matthew 14:22-36 [or Matthew 15:1-2,10-14]
August 3, 2021

“Those who were in the boat did Him homage, saying, ‘Truly, you are the Son of God.’”

Very unusually, on this weekday in Ordinary Time the Church provides two options for the day’s Gospel passage.  The following reflection is based upon the former option.

The Church bears a rich treasury of interpretation of Sacred Scripture.  By that I don’t simply mean that the Church has accumulated many different, though equally insightful, interpretations of Scripture from the writings of her many members (although that’s true).  The Church’s treasury of Scripture interpretation is based upon a four-fold view of the Holy Bible.

The first view of the Bible looks at the literal meaning of a Scripture passage.  In the case of today’s Gospel passage, for example, the literal meaning of the passage is an historical event involving Jesus interacting with His disciples, and miraculously walking on water.  One could write a long and spiritually fruitful essay solely about the literal meaning of this passage.

However, the other three views of Scripture consider different “spiritual senses” of a given passage.  That doesn’t mean, of course, that the literal meaning doesn’t deal with spiritual matters.  But the three spiritual senses of Scripture relate the literal meaning to a broader meaning that the passage doesn’t directly touch upon.

For example, at the end of today’s Gospel passage, those who were in the boat did Jesus homage, saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God.”  Above and beyond the literal meaning of this event, one can “see” the boatful of disciples confessing the divinity of Jesus as symbolizing the Church Militant (that is, the Church on earth).  Around this basic symbol are several complementary symbols:  for example, the water on which the boat rests, and the weather surrounding the boat, as the turbulent world in which the Church Militant lives; and the confession of faith as a symbol of the Sacred Liturgy of the Church which receives Jesus into the Church’s “boat”.

It is easier to ponder the literal sense of Scripture than the three spiritual senses.  But with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the examples of the Church’s saints, the three spiritual senses of Sacred Scripture invite us into rich theological waters.

Monday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time [Years B & C]
Matthew 14:13-21

… His heart was moved with pity for them ….

Being compassionate, Jesus was certainly concerned with the physical well-being of the people who had come to hear him preach.  Just how deep Christ’s compassion was is made obvious when we consider again something the first verse of this passage tells us.

Jesus is told about the hunger of the crowds right after He had heard of the death of John the Baptizer, and had withdrawn by boat to a deserted place by Himself.  If we were to take time to imagine this, we could very clearly see just how human Christ was, responding in grief and perhaps anger at the death of His own cousin.  He withdrew from others to be alone.  And yet, even at this point in His life, the needs of others pressed upon Him.  His response was that of God himself:  he turned away from Himself, and towards those in need.

Jesus was certainly concerned with the physical well-being of the people who had come to hear Him preach.  But He knew the people in the crowds better than they knew themselves.  Christ had a much deeper concern for their spiritual well-being.  He had reminded them that their ancestors, whom God had fed in the desert by sending bread in the form of manna, had died.  His divine Father, Jesus told them, had sent Him to be their spiritual bread:  a bread which would allow them to live forever.  If they would eat this bread by accepting him and following his commandments, they could enter into God’s eternal kingdom of love.