At times, God has provided physical bread “from heaven” — a bread, that is, which was the sustaining nourishment needed in those times. This Sunday’s readings remember several of these moments. First, we see God give to Elijah in the Old Testament reading from 1 Kings 19:4-8. The Gospel reading, John 6:41-51, also mentions two different moments in which God sends bread from heaven: the manna given to the Israelites during their exodus from Egypt, and the bread Christ multiplied to feed the “large crowd” on the shores of the Galilean sea.
It is Christ who tells us that these miraculous gifts of physical nourishment are signs of a more fundamental form of nourishment: “I am the bread of life. / Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; / this is the bread that comes down from heaven / so that one may eat it and not die. / I am the living bread that came down from heaven; / whoever eats this bread will live forever; / and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
| August 11 – Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time |
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1 Kgs 19:4-8 Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9 Eph 4:30–5:2 Jn 6:41-51 |
Indeed, hearing Christ’s words, we understand that these miracles of bread are a part of God’s pedagogy. They are God’s way of teaching us about himself and about ourselves. He is the nourishment we need; the nourishment that will truly sustain us. “I am the bread of life,” come “down from heaven,” “for the life of the world.”
Let us explore, therefore, this deeper meaning of “bread from heaven.” Our reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians will be helpful here. In that letter, Paul urges the Ephesians to “be imitators of God,” explaining that this will mean to “live in love” and to “hand ourselves over” to God and to one another.
Forgiveness
And here is where we could say more. We could understand God’s forgiveness offered in Christ more fully and more deeply. The late Pope Benedict XVI said much about the “bread” of God’s forgiveness. Meditating on the cross where Christ offered himself as bread (“I will give my flesh for the life of the world”), Benedict describes Christ as “stretched out,” reaching between God and man and thus reconciling them by the love now stretched between God and Man.
In fact, Benedict reminded us again and again throughout his writings that the New Testament “message of love” is not simply about “brotherly love” or “fellowship,” but the “direct love of” and “adoration of God.” This, Benedict says, is the “substance of Christianity” and “that of true humanity.” “[A]doration is man’s highest possibility.”
The man is all “exodus” … who is self-surpassing love.
“The fundamental principle of Christian worship is consequently this movement of exodus with its two-in-one direction toward God and fellowman. By carrying humanity to God, Christ incorporates it in his salvation. The reason why the happening on the Cross is the bread of life ‘for the man’ is that he who was crucified has smelted the body of humanity into the Yes of worship. … to the extent that this exodus of love is the ec-stasy of man outside himself, in which he is stretched out infinitely beyond himself, torn apart, as it were, far beyond his apparent capacity for being stretched, to the same extent worship is always at the same time the Cross … the dying of the grain of wheat that can come to fruition only in death.
“Letting God act on us — that is Christian sacrifice” (“Introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius Press, $19.95).
More specifically, St. Paul says that we must be compassionate and forgive one another just as God has forgiven us in Christ.
