Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Bread.
In today’s America, bread is often served at meals, but it is usually seen as a “starter” or a “side.” In fact, many people who are watching their diets now choose to forego bread all together.
It’s important for us to realize, however, that the way Jesus and his contemporaries ate was radically different from the way most of us eat today. For example, no utensils were used by people in Jesus’ time. A person ate with his or her hands, typically dipping into the food and bringing the food from the dish to their mouths.
Jesus even describes this when he identifies his betrayer, Judas, at the Last Supper as “one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me.”
Our mindset, though, leads us to think of bread as an extra … an extra that we can either take or leave. But Jesus’ mindset and experience made bread essential to the process of eating in his world.
According to the Gospel of John, the “bread that came down from heaven”, Jesus himself, is the way we can access and partake, “take and eat,” of the life that God offers us – life to the full forever!
Jesus … his way of living, his way of thinking, his way of seeing, his way of acting … becomes the “bread” that we are invited to consume. It is the bread that will bring an abundance to life by feeding us the energy and desire to build a new world – a world that resembles the face of God.
Jesus is the bread that will give us the power to transform our way of thinking, to change our hierarchy of values, to challenge us to reach more deeply inside our hearts to become mirrors of the God we believe in.
However, the problem is that it is easy for us to be confused about the “main course.” Power, success, pleasure, comfort, and wealth can easily seduce us into thinking that the “main course” of life is defined in exclusively material terms.
Jesus’ view is quite different. In the words of Fr. Jose Pagola, a world-renowned Scripture scholar:
“What human beings want is to live, and live well. And what God wants is to turn that wish into reality. For Jesus, God’s will is not at all mysterious: it is abundant life for everyone! We will never find a better ally for our happiness than God. The idea of a God who cares only about receiving honor and glory, forgetting about the good and the happiness of his sons and daughters, is not from Jesus. God cares passionately about his children’s well-being, health, community, peace, family, enjoyment of life, and eternal fulfillment.
“That is why God is always on the side of human beings and against evil, suffering, oppression and death. Jesus accepts God as a power that seeks only the good, stands against whatever is painful for human beings, and thereby seeks to liberate human life from evil.”
“This is Jesus’ whole life story.”
And this view of life is offered to each of us – through the Eucharist and into eternity. This “main course” is God becoming one with us through the “bread that came down from heaven.”
It is the food that enables each of us to become engaged in a great journey to God – a journey that nourishes us, challenges us, converts us, heals us.
Enjoy the feast!
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
