Gospel Reflection – Week 18 Ordinary Time – Cycle B – John 6: 24-35

When we see how the ancient Israelites ‘put God to the test’, as the Psalms remind us, we see something of ourselves. The children of God demanded signs and this exasperated Moses. ‘You do this’, they challenged Yahweh, ‘and we will believe, we will follow you.’ They demanded food in the desert and God provided. As today’s responsorial psalm puts it:

‘He rained down manna for their food,
and gave them bread from heaven.

Mere men ate the bread of angels.
He sent them abundance of food.
He brought them to his holy land,
to the mountain which his right hand had won.’

But in today’s Gospel Christ reminds us that the Father’s nourishment goes far beyond bodily food. His is a spiritual, life-giving sustenance, and it is him, through the Son, who will provide it to us and bring us to the heavenly banquet that is eternal peace and happiness.

We can very easily slip, when coming to God through prayer, and think that we know what is best for us. We can pray on our own terms as though God were a genie. There is a selfishness to this kind of prayer and Christ himself alludes to this when he says:

‘…you are not looking for me
because you have seen the signs
but because you had all the bread you wanted to eat.’

Sustaining a deep level of oblation to God is crucial in prayer, as we learn to forget our egos and submit ourselves in all of our brokenness. We need sustenance of the kind that we can’t begin to imagine. The curtain that separates our finite understanding from the searing light of God must be kept loose, so to speak, so that we may always be open to it being opened by God. But it is we who keep this curtain closed, and so did our spiritual ancestors. We see it in today’s Gospel when Jesus opens out a whole new understanding to those around him, to the crowds and to his disciples. This was an understanding that was incredibly difficult to understand; they had probably not considered before that the food they needed was more than bread to feed the body.

We, too, should look for this spiritual food.

It is only then, in the vast openness that our faith demands of us, that the word of Christ resounds and echoes, re-charging and re-echoing through our understanding and down through the centuries:

‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry;
he who believes in me will never thirst.’

Our hearts are in the right place. Like the crowds in today’s Gospel, we seek Christ. But we should never let that seeking become the religion itself; not, at least, if we remain closed to his word. Doing so would turn us into the pharisaic husks of religion that Jesus so regularly denounced. Instead, we have the opportunity through the Gospels to approach the mystery of Christ in the way that he himself approached his own ministry: in humility and according to his single commandment to love.

 

GOSPEL
The Lord be with you.          And with your spirit

A reading from the Gospel according to John    6:24-35       

Glory to you, O Lord.
Theme: He who comes to me will never be hungry; he who believes in me will never thirst.

When the people saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into boats and crossed to Capernaum to look for Jesus. When they found him on the other side, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered:

‘I tell you most solemnly,
you are not looking for me
because you have seen the signs
but because you had all the bread you wanted to eat.
Do not work for food that cannot last,
but work for food that endures to eternal life,
the kind of food the Son of Man is offering you,
for on him the Father, God himself, has set his seal’

Then they said to him, ‘What must we do if we are to do the works that God wants?’
Jesus gave them this answer,
‘This is working for God: you must believe in the one he has sent.‘ So they said, ‘What sign will you give to show us that we should believe in you? What work will you do? Our fathers had manna to eat in the desert; as scripture says: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’

Jesus answered:
I tell you most solemnly,
it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven,
it is my Father who gives you the bread from heaven,
the true bread;
for the bread of God
is that which comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.’~
‘Sir,’ they said ‘give us that bread always.’

Jesus answered:
‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry;
he who believes in me will never thirst.’

The Gospel of the Lord.         Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.