When you were younger, a teenager perhaps, did you ever get so mad at your parents that you yelled at them, maybe slammed a door, walked out, said you hated them? Were you ever that mad at your parents? Especially, you know, when they were just doing their job as parents. I’m not talking about bad parents, but good ones. Did you ever yell at your parents when they didn’t deserve it? I’ll raise my hand; I’ll own it. But maybe you were a better kid than me.
That’s what I always think about when I come across this reading from Exodus, because that’s kind of what’s going on. The Hebrews, you see, are wandering in the desert, and they have just about had it. They’re hungry and angry at each other and angry at God. And this is what they say: “Would that we had died at the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread. But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!” (Ex 16:3).
Now think for a minute about what they’re actually saying to Moses and to God. They’re accusing God and Moses basically of being genocidal maniacs, that they carried the Hebrews out of Egypt just to watch them starve to death. They’re accusing the God who saved them of doing the exact opposite. They’re calling God a killer instead of a savior. Like — but even more harsh — a teenager screaming at his or her parents.
That’s the analogy I always make in my head when I read about the Hebrews’ murmuring against God in the desert. I identify with the Hebrews. I’ve been mad at God like that, too; I’ve said foolish stuff like that, too.
| August 4 – Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time |
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Ex 16:2-4, 12-15 Ps 78:3-4, 23-24, 25, 54 Eph 4:17, 20-24 Jn 6:24-35 |
But what does God do? My parents, thankfully, did not disown me. They didn’t kick the door down. They didn’t hate me back. Rather, they loved me. They still fed me, kept me home with them. Which is how I’ve always read the next verse in this passage from Exodus: “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I will now rain down bread from heaven for you'” (Ex 16:4). That is what God does — even when we scream at him, even when we say the most foolishly hateful things about him — he offers to feed us. Manna answers our hatred, for God is what God is and not the worst that we sometimes think about him.
The love of the Eucharist
Which is a beautiful way to think about this passage from John and the words of Jesus: “I am the bread of life” (Jn 6:35). And these words, too: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). And these: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day” (Jn 6:54). You see what this is? You see what God is doing in Christ? You see what gift is given in his flesh and blood in the Eucharist? It’s the perfection of what God did in the desert when he answered the Hebrews’ grumbling with bread. It’s all motivated by love. As St. John Vianney put it once: “And why does this happen? Out of infinite love.” That’s what’s so beautiful.
In this year of Eucharistic revival, we are invited to rediscover the Eucharist in many ways. And in many ways we should explore this central gift of our faith, this source and summit — theologically, morally, socially. But what this passage from Exodus teaches me is that I should first remember that the Eucharist is always a gift of God’s endless love. That no matter how mad I get, how much I grumble, the invitation to partake of God’s saving bread remains. Not that I am invited to take that gift for granted! But I must never forget that the gift is always there, and it’s always love.
It’s beautiful, really, if you think about it. Every time you go to Mass, it’s God saying he loves you. Because that’s all he’s ever done: love you and me.
