During the week a priest friend of mine was telling me that he was just back from holidays where he had been mountain climbing with a German priest friend of his. They were somewhere in the mountains on the Austrian-German border. His friend had a map, but it was five years old and one of the paths they took turned out to be very dangerous. It was basically no longer usable. He said that for most of it there was a rope on one side for safety, although there was a sheer drop on the other side. But then they came to a place about 15 feet long where there was no rope, so they just had to cling to the side of the cliff on this extremely narrow ledge until they got past it. He told me that it was quite terrifying and a matter of slowly taking one step at a time, then finding proper hand grip, then another step. By the time he got to the far side he was quite exhausted and traumatised, but what interested me was that his friend, who is an experienced mountaineer, then told him to sit down and that they should eat something. When you have been through an experience like that, eating changes your metabolism and calms you down. And he said that it did just that. Within a short time he was fine again.
There is also an interesting story in the Old Testament where the prophet Elijah is on the run having just worked an extraordinary miracle, but now Queen Jezebel is out to kill him. So he escapes into the desert, but at one point he sits down feeling fed up and prays to God, ‘Take my life, I am no better than my ancestors’, or in modern English, ‘I wish I was dead; I’ve had enough’. Then he lies down and goes to sleep. But then he is woken by an angel who tells him to get up and eat, so that he will have enough strength for the journey. There he finds food beside him. The right kind of nourishment is essential.
In this Gospel passage Jesus is just after working the miracle of feeding five thousand people with the five loaves and two fish and the people come after him to see more of this wonder-worker. However, as is often the case, the miracle Jesus worked was pointing to something deeper and He says to them, ‘You are only looking for me because you got free food, but you didn’t see the “sign.” What ‘sign’? What was He talking about? And then He says, ‘Don’t be concerned only with temporary food, but look for the food that endures forever.’ The miracle of multiplying the loaves, was a sign of something much deeper. Jesus then begins to teach them that there is another kind of food that we need for our whole life; not just material food that you eat, but food which brings meaning/purpose/direction. And then He tells them that He is this food which lasts forever and the kind of food we need for the journey which is our whole life. Jesus is the one who gives us strength and meaning to help us keep going. He is the one who makes sense of what our whole life is about. If you don’t have the right kind of meaning or purpose for being here, then it is very hard to keep going especially when things don’t make sense, as they so often don’t.
In the second reading (Ephesians 4:17, 20-24) St. Paul says, ‘You must no longer live in the futility of your minds,’ in another translation it says, ‘Don’t live the kind of aimless life that Pagans live.’ That is exactly what can happen to us if we lose sight of faith, or get too caught up in the world and worldly worries. We forget what the real purpose of our life is. You see this happening all around us, especially when things are good economically. At this time more and more people are living aimless lives, focused only on themselves and their families, forgetting that there is something much bigger going on, which we are all part of, whether we like it or not. Our life is not just about ourselves. We were created by God, remain in existence because of God and can only go to heaven by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Our life only makes sense in God. Apart from God our life is meaningless.
I always find it sad to meet people at a funeral who have little or no faith. You can see that they don’t know what to turn to. They have no hope. They talk about the deceased as though their existence is over, because they see this life as everything. Now their life is finished. We believe almost the opposite. When we die, our time of service is complete. Our time of free choice is complete, but now we begin eternal life, either with or without God. If we really believe that, then painful and all as death is, we have the hope that sooner or later we can be with our loved ones again. It is only a temporary separation. The earthly part of our life is over, but our life isn’t over. We will live forever. It is just a question of where.
God is showing us that the right kind of food for the journey is Jesus himself. ‘I am the bread of life’. That is why Jesus gives himself to us in the Eucharist and speaks to us through his word, so that we have all the nourishment that we need for the journey. If we know what our life is about, it is much easier to keep going even if we are struggling physically.
When God fed the people of Israel with manna in the desert, He told them to only collect enough food for each day. If they collected more than this, the food went off, except for the day before the Sabbath. The day before the Sabbath they were to collect enough for two days, so that they could rest on the Sabbath and when they did collect enough, it didn’t go off. He was teaching them to trust in him to take care of them on a daily basis. The Lord continues to do the same with us. That is also why He doesn’t reveal the future to us. He wants us to trust that He will take care of us.
The people asked Jesus, ‘What can we do to accomplish the works of God?’ In other words, ‘What is God asking us to do?’ and Jesus answers, ‘You must believe in the One He has sent.’ To fulfil what God asks us to do, we must believe in Jesus, in who He is, in what He has done for us and what He teaches us. When we die we will instantly stand before him for judgement. We would be foolish to wait until then to sort everything out, because then it will be too late. This life is when we are to put our affairs in order. Jesus is the only one who makes sense of it and Jesus gives us himself as the spiritual food we need. Every time we receive the Eucharist, we receive the gift of Jesus himself, not just a symbol, but really and truly Jesus himself and Jesus is a real, living person. Every time we listen to the Scriptures, we are listening to God speaking to us and speaking to us in a very personal way.
Jesus must be at the centre, everything else comes second.
I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me will never be hungry;
Whoever believes in me will never thirst.
No comments:
Post a Comment