Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – August 4, 2024

by Deacon Michael Hoonhout  |  08/04/2024  |  Weekly Reflection

When hunger overtakes you, the importance of what you were doing fades until you find the satisfaction of a filled stomach. Whatever you were doing, that day’s pursuit, succumbs to the simple need for sustenance. A life spent primarily on the pleasures of food and drink is meanly lived, yet no one can go without eating. Wisely, we often combine caloric intake with the good of eating together, changing the meal into a communal repast of joyful conversation. We do well when the replenishing of the body is joined with true communion with others, the one thing really worth living for.

In the first reading the Israelites, wandering in the desert, are hungry and grumbling to Moses about it. Forgetting that the Lord is with them, they fear they will starve to death in the desert, and begin to long for the lush and fertile land along the Nile River in Egypt. In the moment, they would accept a return to slavery if it meant a filled stomach each and every day. Their predicament symbolizes the spiritual choice we ourselves must make in choosing to live either for our bodies or for the Lord. We could prefer life in Egypt — that is, a life enslaved to the pursuit of being comfortably satisfied. Or we could risk embarking on a desert journey lived in obedience to God who will lead us to a life that already tastes of heaven. For in his mercy the Lord feeds his hungry people with a food unknown to them, described in the psalm as the bread of angels. He rains down from heaven manna, a word in Hebrew that perfectly captures the wonder and surprise they felt when they first discovered it: what is it?

As we heard in last week’s Gospel, Jesus had just fed the multitude in a deserted place by multiplying a few loaves and fishes. When the crowd finally finds Jesus again the next day, Jesus discerns that they were looking for him because they had the satisfaction of filled bellies. Instead, they should desire the “food that endures for eternal life.” As with the Israelites in the desert before God, the crowd faces the same spiritual choice before Jesus: self-satisfaction or the life that only God can give. This life, described here as eternal, and later in the chapter as life in the Son, is the gift of God and sustained by the true bread from heaven. God has authorized — set his seal upon — the Son to give this life. Jesus can give this life because God has sent him from heaven as the true living bread, the bread of life.

In this time of Eucharistic Revival, we also need to ask ourselves about our faith in Jesus as the true bread from heaven. With the Israelites let us wonder about the Eucharist, the true manna, asking: what is it? This means a renewed embrace of the Church’s faith, continuous from apostolic times, that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, under the sacramental sign of bread and wine. Simply, the Eucharist is Jesus, his personal reality hidden under the sensible appearance of bread and wine. He gives himself in this sacramental way so that we might receive him precisely as our true food and drink, and thus have eternal life, life to the full. No mere symbol could possibly be the true bread of heaven, for it is not meaning or significance that sustains us eternally, but only God.

But our asking what is it about the Eucharist must also include asking, what is the Eucharist to me? Do I find in the Eucharist the life I am looking for? Do I taste heaven when I receive it? When we receive the Eucharist, do we understand what Jesus meant in saying we will never hunger or thirst again? When Jesus hands himself over to us as our daily bread, do we find fulfillment in the divine life, the divine love, contained within it? We too face the same spiritual choice: do I live for self-satisfaction, or do I long for and seek the life only God can give when He sends the true bread from heaven? Am I willing to let God lead me beyond an enslaved life of comfort and security for a desert journey to the promised land?

Only by faith can we know Jesus in the Eucharist. But do we treat the Eucharist in the same way we would the risen Jesus? Do we love the Eucharist precisely as we love Jesus, or do we regard it as “Jesus lite”? If you heard that the risen Jesus would be appearing in a certain church at a certain time, would you not rearrange your entire schedule to be there for the encounter? Yet how great is our effort to meet the very same Jesus present in the tabernacle in every Church at any time of the day? How is it permissible to ignore the Real Presence in the tabernacle when we would never do that if the risen Jesus stood in our midst? When we receive the Eucharist, let us never just consume it without encountering the person. As he gives his very self to us, let us always give ourselves to him, sharing ourselves with him who shares his very life with us.