Gospel (Except USA)John 6:24-35It is my Father who gives you the bread from heaven; I am the bread of life. 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 signsbut 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 Godis that which comes down from heavenand 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.’ Gospel (USA)John 6:24–35Whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst. When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered them and said, “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. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.” So they said to him, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” So they said to him, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” So Jesus said to them, “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.”So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” (i) Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Irish people carry a collective memory of the great famine. We may not always think about it or speak about it, but the memory of it is deep within us. My grandparents were born in the 1880s but their parents were born at the time of the famine, or just immediately after it. So, it is not so long ago really. That collective sense of our own famine helps to make us very sensitive to contemporary famines, which are so often the result of war. We have all been horrified by news of children dying of hunger in the Gaza strip in recent months. Jesus often spoke about the need to feed the hungry. On one occasion, he identified fully with the hungry, declaring, ‘I was hungry and you gave me food’. He was critical of the very wealthy who were indifferent to the plight of the hungry. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the hungry Lazarus sat at the gate of the rich man longing to be filled with scraps that fell from his table. His longing was only satisfied after his death when he had a place of honour at Abraham’s side at the banquet of eternal life. However, Jesus was saying in the parable that Lazarus’ hunger should have been satisfied before his death. In last Sunday’s gospel reading, Jesus responded to the hunger of a large crowd in the wilderness by feeding them with the five barley loaves and two fish that a young boy offered to him. Jesus was deeply concerned about the physical wellbeing of those in greatest need. The heart of the risen Lord continues to be broken by the cries of the hungry today. He rejoices in the efforts of various groups to provide food for the hungry. We can think of the Capuchin day centre in Church Street, Dublin, and the various food banks. In our own parish people do great work bringing hampers of food to families who struggle to put food on the table. All of these people are doing the Lord’s work. He is working through them all to continue feeding the hungry. In today’s gospel reading Jesus speaks about a different kind of hunger that he was also very concerned about. The crowd whom Jesus fed abundantly in the wilderness went looking for him after he had left them. They crossed the Sea of Galilee in boats to find him. They wanted him to repeat the miracle that he had done the previous day. When they finally caught up with Jesus, he spoke very directly to them, ‘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’. Jesus was very concerned about ‘food that cannot last’, the physical food we all need to survive, and he was deeply troubled when people were deprived of it. However, on this occasion, Jesus is reminding people whom he had recently fed about the importance of another kind of food, the food that endures to eternal life. Apart from our physical hungers, there are deeper hungers in our lives that we also need to attend to. There is a kind of emptiness in our heart and spirit that physical food cannot fill. There is a longing within us, a deep hunger and thirst that nothing material or physical can fully satisfy. Jesus claims in the gospel reading to be able to fill that emptiness, to answer that longing, to satisfy that deeper hunger and thirst within us. He declares himself to be the bread of life, and he promises that those who come to him will never be hungry in that deeper, spiritual, sense. It is a very powerful claim. Saint Augustine once said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. Because Jesus is the fullness of God, God-with-us, we can say that our hearts are restless until they rest in him. In the gospel reading Jesus is calling on us to come to him, to believe in him, as the Bread of life who alone can fully respond to our deep spiritual hungers and thirsts. When Jesus calls on the people in today’s gospel reading to ‘work for food that endures to eternal life’, they understandably ask, ‘What must we do to do the works that God wants?’ In other words, if we are to work for this food that endures to eternal life, what works are we to do? In response to their question, Jesus gives a very striking answer, ‘This is working for God: you must believe in the one he has sent’. More important than any good works, Jesus is saying, is faith in him, a trusting, faithful, loving relationship with him. It is only such a relationship that will satisfy our deepest hunger for food that endures to eternal life. The Lord wants to have a deeply personal relationship with each of us, and he calls us into such a relationship. If we respond to his call, our deepest longings will be satisfied, our longing for a love that is faithful, our longing for truth and beauty, our longing for life. Also, if we grow in our relationship with the Lord, all sorts of good works will flow from it, including the good work of feeding the physically hungry. And/Or (ii) Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time We all have needs which drive us to seek to have those needs met. At the most basic level, we need food and water in order to live. We have other, less physical, needs, such as the need for communion. We all need friends, people we can confide in and share our lives with. We have spiritual needs, the need to reach out to a greater power beyond ourselves and others, drawing us towards ultimate values, such as truth, freedom and justice. The first reading this morning is set in the context of the wilderness between Egypt and the Promised Land. The people of Israel had lived in Egypt, a foreign land, for many generations, where they were slaves of the Pharaoh. Their need and longing for freedom was finally responded to when God called Moses to lead them out of slavery in Egypt towards the Promised Land. Freedom is, indeed, a basic need, both personal freedom and communal freedom. When it is denied, it can give rise to deep resentment and even violent revolt. A person whose needs for food and drink are fully met, but whose need for freedom is denied, will be deeply unhappy. In today’s first reading, however, whereas the people’s need for freedom had been responded to, their more basic need for food and water was not being met. They expressed the view to Moses that slavery in Egypt where they were well fed was preferable to freedom in the wilderness where they were starving. Important human needs can seem of little consequence if still more basic needs are not being met. According to our reading, the Lord went on to respond to the people’s cry for food in the wilderness. The Scriptures suggest that the Lord works on the principle of first things first. Feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, housing the homeless, meeting those basic human needs, come before other forms of ministry to people. You might recall last Sunday’s gospel reading, where Jesus met the basic need of the multitude in the wilderness for food, feeding them with bread and fish. Today’s gospel reading is set in the context of the day after that feeding. The same crowd approach Jesus looking for more of the same. On this occasion, however, Jesus attempts to move them beyond their preoccupation with physical food towards deeper realities. He seeks to lead them beyond too great a focus on their physical needs towards a greater attention to their spiritual needs. ‘Do not work for food that cannot last, but work for food that endures to eternal life’. The sense of what Jesus is calling for might better be expressed as, ‘do not work only for food that cannot last, but work also for food that endures to eternal life’. Jesus is calling on them to pay attention to the deeper hungers and thirsts in their lives. That call of Jesus remains very relevant in our part of the world where most peoples’ basic needs for food, clothing and shelter are met, and where the danger is that people will immerse themselves in the pursuit of the material to the neglect of the spiritual. This is also Paul’s concern in today’s second reading: ‘Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution’. Jesus goes on in the gospel reading to present himself as the bread of life, as the one who can satisfy those deeper hungers and thirsts in our hearts. It is in coming to him, believing in him, that our hunger for the food that endures to eternal life will be met. Our deepest longings can be satisfied by Jesus the Bread of Life. Our longing for truth, for ultimate meaning, can be met by the one who said of himself, ‘I am the truth’. Our need for a love that is enduring and reliable can be met by the one who displayed a ‘greater love’ on the cross. Our need for reassurance that we are forgiven and accepted in spite of past failures can be met by the one whom John the Baptist addressed as the Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world. Our longing for a life that will never end is met by the one who declared himself to be the resurrection and the life. Our longing to serve others can be met by the one who washed the feet of his disciples and who empowers us to do the same for one another. In the gospel reading, Jesus calls on the crowd to ‘work’ for the food that endures to eternal life. They are to give themselves to the task of ensuring that the deeper, spiritual hungers in their lives are satisfied. In response to that call, the people ask the obvious question, ‘What must we do if we are to do the works that God wants?’ The reply of Jesus to their question is striking in its simplicity, ‘you must believe in the one God has sent’. The works that God wants can be boiled down to this one work of believing in Jesus, responding to his call to ‘come and see’. In responding to that call of the Lord, in seeking to grow in our relationship with him, we will indeed be engaging in the task of responding to the deeper hungers and thirsts in our lives... And/Or (iii) Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time It appears that many things that are made today are not made to last. We could take buildings as one example of that phenomenon. We are very fortunate to live in a city which has some beautiful buildings that are hundreds of years old. The old house of Parliament, now the Bank of Ireland, in College Green comes to mind; it is almost three hundred years old now. I wonder how many of the building that have gone up in recent years in the city will still be there in three hundred years time. Much of what we buy on a smaller scale, like furniture for our homes, does not seem to last very long either. The clothes that we wear have a shorter life span compared to a generation or two ago. Yet, some of what is being made today will last into the future. Some books of the past have an enduring value. There are probably some books of our own time will have an enduring value too; they will be read into the future. The same could be said of a small number of films that are presently being made. People will watch them well into the distant future. Some plays that are presently being written will be watched and enjoyed for generations to come. We always retain the capacity to create something of enduring value, something that has the capacity to engage people not just in the present but into the future. They last because their value is great. On our journey through life we tend to seek out what might be of lasting value because we sense that it can enrich us and make us better human beings. Having found something of real value we often return to it, whether it is a book, a poem, a piece of music, a painting or a building. We know from our own experience that what we really value are not so much objects or things but people. A good friend is worth so much more to us than a good book, or a good piece of music, or a good painting. There is nothing more valuable to parents than their children. For those who are in love, their treasure is the beloved. Everything else is on a much lesser scale of value. We want the people we value to last forever, which is why the death or the loss of a loved one is such a devastating experience. In the gospel reading this morning, the crowds of people whom Jesus fed in the wilderness come looking for him. They want more of the bread he had provided. Jesus takes the opportunity to point them towards more enduring. He says to them, ‘do not work for food that cannot last, but work for food that endures to eternal life’. The horizon of Jesus here is not just the horizon of this world but the horizon of eternity. When he speaks of what it is that lasts he means what it is that lasts into eternity. For Jesus what is of lasing value is not just what will continue to be valued by generations into the future, but what will continue to have value in eternity. It is difficult for us to keep that horizon of eternity before us, especially in these times. We find all that pertains to his life sufficiently absorbing. Yet the horizon of Jesus is the horizon of eternity. He certainly takes this life very seriously; he has invested himself in showing us how to live in this life, by his teaching, his way of relating to others. He gave himself over to meeting the basic needs of those he met. He healed the sick; he comforted the bereaved; the fed the hungry; he befriended the lonely. He told us to do the same and declared that what we do for the least we do for him. Yet, all the time the backdrop was an eternal horizon. In living in this way, we are preparing ourselves to live forever. Those who live by the values of the kingdom of God will inherit the kingdom of God. Jesus spoke of himself as the way. He is the way to live in this life; he shows us how to life well. Thereby, he is also the way to eternal life; those who follow in his way will live forever. Jesus is concerned about what endures not just into successive generations but what endures into eternity. He understood that we have been created by God to live forever and he came to show us how to attain that eternal life and to empower us to attain it. That is why he speaks of himself in the gospel reading as the bread of life. He endures into eternity and those who receive him in faith and walk in his way will also endure into eternity. If we come to him and remain with him our deepest hungers and thirsts will be satisfied in this life and more fully in the next. When we think about what endures, we are to think first of him. He is the gateway to enduring life, for ourselves and for all we love and value. And/Or (iv) Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time At any time of our lives we can recognize that we are living our lives at a certain level and we feel a call to go to a deeper level in some way. I may be doing the usual things well but sense that there is something more that I am being called to. In this morning’s gospel reading, the crowd who had been fed in the wilderness by Jesus with bread and fish a short time before come looking for Jesus. They want him to keep doing what he had just done, providing them with food. They go looking for him to get more of the same from him. They recognize him as someone who can provide for their basic physical needs. They are very much fixed at the level of the material and the physical. When they find Jesus, he doesn’t respond to their request for more of the same but invites them to go to a deeper level. ‘Do not work for food that cannot last’, he says, ‘but work for food that endures to eternal life’. Jesus took food that cannot last very seriously. He fed the hungry and, indeed, identified himself with the hungry, ‘I was hungry and you gave me something to eat’. He spoke a parable against the self-indulgent rich who were blind to the starving Lazarus at their gate. Jesus insisted that the basic physical needs of people be met by those who had more than they needed. This was an important part of his message and until this happens the kingdom of God will not have fully come. Yet, he was also very concerned with the deeper hungers and thirsts of people, their hunger for an unconditional love, for a forgiveness with no strings attached, for an experience of community where they would be valued not for what they possessed or their status but for who they were as human beings, for a healing that embraced their body, soul and spirit. It is to these deeper hungers of the human heart that Jesus speaks in this morning’s gospel reading when he says, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry; whoever believes in me will never thirst’. When we hear Jesus refer to himself as ‘the Bread of Life’, we tend to think immediately of the Eucharist. The children who prepare for their first holy communion are taught that Jesus will be coming to them as the Bread of Life. All of this is true. Yet, in claiming to be the Bread of Life, Jesus is also making the very bold claim that he alone can satisfy those deeper hungers and thirsts of the human heart with which we are born and which never leaves us, even though we can lose touch with them. Many people experience a kind of spiritual awakening at some point in their lives. They may have been very successful and accomplished at all sorts of levels and yet sense that there is some deeper level that they have never really attended to. They sense a deeper hunger that hasn’t really been satisfied. The Lord is always offering us spiritual food but we don’t always have much of an appetite for it. We can take it or leave it. Then something can happen that puts us in touch with some deeper hunger within us that has not been satisfied. Jesus offers himself to us in the gospel reading as the one who can feed that deeper hunger. When Jesus called on the people in today’s gospel reading to work for food that endures to eternal life, the people respond by asking him what kind of work is involved - what are the works of God you are asking us to do? Jesus replies by stating that there is only one work necessary – believe in the one that God has sent. It is a faith relationship with Jesus that allows us to experience him as the Bread of Life who satisfies our deepest hunger. The question of the crowd, ‘What work do we have to do in order to find this food that endures to eternal life?’ is a very understandable one. ‘Tell me what to do’. Jesus is saying that there is something more fundamental required than doing and that is being in a faith relationship with him. The Christian life does not consist primarily in faithfully complying with a list of practices and observances. Rather, at the heart of our identity as Christians is a living and trustful relationship with Jesus. All that God wants is that we believe in his Son, because he is the great gift God has sent to the world in response to our deepest longings. This is what we need to work at, entering into and deepening our relationship with the Lord. All the rest is secondary and will flow from this personal relationship. This relationship, which personal, is not private. We must come together with other believers if we are to grow in our relationship with the Lord. It is in and through the community of believers, the church, that we experience the Lord offering himself to us as the Bread of Life and that we respond to that wonderful offer. And/Or (v) Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time One of the games that we loved to play as children was hide and seek. One of the group of children would hide and the rest of us would try to find him or her. There was a certain thrill about the search and there was the excitement of finding the one who had been hiding. It seems to be a game that never really goes out of date in the world of children. Maybe the game appealed to us as children because it spoke to something deeper in us. There is a sense in which we remain people who seek after something or other all through our lives. We seek after contentment, peace of mind and heart. We seek to be creative in some way so as to contribute to the well-being of others. We seek to receive love from others and to give love to others. We seek after goodness, truth and beauty. We are aware of deep desires in our lives, spiritual hungers and thirsts, and we seek to have them satisfied. Saint Augustine said that underpinning all our seeking and searching is the search for God. He wrote in his Confessions, ‘our hearts are restless, until they rest in God’. The people in today’s gospel reading are portrayed as seekers. As we heard in last Sunday’s gospel, Jesus had just fed the people in the wilderness with bread and fish. They were deeply impressed by what Jesus did, so much so that they wanted to make him their king, there and then. Jesus had to escape into the hills to prevent this from happening. However, Jesus was not going to escape that easily. The people got into boats and crossed the Sea of Galilee to look for Jesus until they found him. There was something praiseworthy about their search for Jesus. Yet, Jesus’ opening words to them suggests that they were searching for him for the wrong reasons. He tells them that they are looking for him because they had all the bread they wanted to eat. They see Jesus as the one who can provide for their basic physical needs, which is why they wanted to make him their king. Yet, Jesus does not see himself primarily in that role. Yes, it is clear from the gospels, that Jesus was very concerned about people’s basic bodily needs, their need for food and drink, for shelter and clothing, for health and wholeness of body and mind. He called on his followers to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to cloth the naked, to welcome the stranger, to take care of the sick, to visit those in prison, and he goes so far as to say that in that in so far as we do this for others we do it for him. All of those good works remain at the heart of Jesus’ ministry and at the heart of the life of his followers. In today’s gospel reading, however, Jesus wants people to recognize that there is more to him than someone who works to satisfy people’s basic bodily needs. He calls on the crowd to see him as someone who can provide not just physical food, but food that endures to eternal life. He is inviting us to reflect on our deeper, spiritual hunger, the hunger and thirst for eternal life, for a sharing in God’s life. This spiritual hunger is not always experienced as pressing and urgent, in the way our physical hunger is. We cannot ignore our physical hunger, but we can ignore our spiritual hunger. Jesus is being true here to a very important strain in his own Jewish tradition, which finds expression in the Scripture verse, ‘humans do not live on bread alone’. When Jesus says to the people, ‘work for the food that endures to eternal life’, he is calling on us to attend to this deeper hunger in our lives. We are not to get so absorbed in satisfying our many bodily desires, that we ignore this deeper, spiritual, desire that is within us all. In response to Jesus saying, ‘work for food that endures to eternal life’, the crowd ask the very understandable question, ‘What must we do if we are to do the works that God wants?’ You have told us to work for the food that endures to eternal life, what works of God, what good works, are we to do? It is the question of people who are genuinely searching. It is often our own question, ‘What are we to do? What is God asking of us?’ In response to that question, Jesus gives a striking answer, ‘this is the work of God; you must believe in the one whom he has sent’. The first thing Jesus asks of us is that we believe in him, that we be in a loving, trusting relationship with him; this is the one work that God wants. At the end of our gospel reading, Jesus uses the language of coming to him, ‘whoever comes to me…’ He is inviting us into a personal friendship with himself. Our good works will then flow from our relationship with him. In our gospel reading, Jesus is bringing us back to what is most fundamental, our personal relationship with him, our daily coming to him and believing in him, in response to his invitation and call. This is what will really satisfy our deepest hunger. And/Or (vi) Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time As you may be aware, Fr William Stuart, a native of this parish, is running a school in Southern Lebanon for children from Syria who are living in tents in a refugee camp. He made an appeal to the people of the three parishes for clothing for the children. We received a wonderful response which will enable William to help meet the basic need children have for clothing. The school he runs is meeting a deeper need the children have for education, to help them to realize their potential as gifted human beings. I suspect the school is helping to meet an even more basic need of the children, their need for people to invest in them in a loving and selfless way. Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said, ‘There are many in the world who aredyingfor a piece of bread but there are many moredyingfor a littlelove’. She went on, ‘It is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's ahunger for love, as there is ahungerfor God’. It is this deeper hunger of the human heart for God that Jesus speaks about in today’s gospel reading. In last Sunday’s gospel reading, Jesus fed the physical hunger of a huge crowd in the wilderness. He was always very concerned about people’s basic, material, needs. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan traveller who attended to the basic, physical, needs of the man left for dead by the roadside was an image of Jesus himself. At the end of the parable, Jesus said to his hearers, ‘God and do likewise’. Jesus also declared that the various corporal works of mercy done for others are done for him, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, taking care of the sick, welcoming the stranger. Jesus identifies himself very closely with those whose basic, material, needs are crying out to be met. Yet, he was also aware that there are deeper hungers and thirsts in the human heart. In today’s gospel reading, the crowd who had benefited from the feast that Jesus provided in the wilderness want more of the same from him. However, when they eventually catch up with Jesus, he doesn’t offer them more of the same. Rather, he offers them a different kind of food, saying to them, ‘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’. Jesus makes a distinction there between perishable food, and food that transcends this perishable, earthly, life. He is making a distinction between two different kinds of hunger, a hunger that can be satisfied by perishable food and a deeper hunger for what cannot perish. Jesus goes on identify the bread that can satisfy this deeper hunger as ‘bread from heaven’, ‘the bread of God’. In conversation with the crowd, Jesus brings them to the point where they ask for this bread, ‘Give us this bread always’. It is in response to their request that Jesus finally identifies himself as this bread of God, the one who can satisfy the deepest hungers of the human heart. ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry; whoever believes in me will never thirst’. Jesus is very aware of the need within us for a larger nourishment that reaches beyond stomachs to hearts and souls, beyond earth to heaven, beyond time to eternity. He offers himself to us as that larger nourishment. He calls us into a living relationship with himself so that he can feed the deep, spiritual hunger in our lives. He calls on us to come to him, to believe in him. When Jesus initially called on the crowd to work for the food that endures to eternal life, they wanted to know what works were they to do so as to acquire this bread. Jesus did not reply to their request with a list of works they were to do. He declared that there was only one work needed, to believe in him as the bread of life and to come to him. Jesus is declaring that a living relationship with him is more fundamental than any work we might do. Our personal relationship with Jesus as the bread of life is what is fundamental; all sorts of works will then flow from that relationship. Loving human relationships have the potential to satisfy some of the deep hungers in our lives, such as the hunger for acceptance, for understanding, for a love that is faithful. Hopefully, we can identify people who have been bread of life for us. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus offers himself to us as the ultimate bread of life, as the one who can fully satisfy our deepest hunger for what is eternal, for a love that endures even beyond this earthly life, our hunger to see God as God truly is. Only Jesus can satisfy that deep spiritual hunger that we all experience from time to time. That is why he offers himself, he gifts himself, to us as Bread of Life. We don’t have to do anything to earn this gift. We only have to accept it freely by coming to him and maintaining a vital contact with him.4th August -Fr. Martin's Homilies / Reflections on Today's Mass Readings for The Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) (Inc. John 6:24-35): ’Work for food that endures to eternal life’.
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
Homilies (6)
Fr. Martin Hogan.
See Also
POPE FRANCIS ON THE 19TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR B - Catholics Striving For HolinessCardinal Gregory praises controversial LGBT Outreach Conference for its ‘synodality’Homily of Holy Father Francis on Day of CatechistsChurch History - Saint Andrew the Apostle Catholic Church