Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary TimeNineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Year B
Readings: 1 Kings 19:4-8; Ephesians 4:30-5:2; John 6:41-51
I am the Living Bread
We have been reading from the Gospel of John for the past few weeks and the theme, ‘Jesus is the Bread of Life,’ is constantly recurring in these readings. In today’s Gospel we hear people murmuring at the teaching of Jesus and trying to understand what this is all about. Let us try to make some sense out of it too.
As Christians we have been listening to Jesus’ teaching all the way from our childhood. We do not really worry or find it hard to understand the phrase, ‘bread of life’ or ‘living bread,’ as we have been hearing it quite often. We also, sometimes, take it for granted as it does not seem to make much difference in our life anyway! And we also do not pay much attention to it because it is part of who we are as Christians, that is to say, if I am a Christian, then I know ‘bread of life’ (even though I have no idea what it is all about)! Do we really?
One of the feasts we celebrated this week is of St Lawrence (on August 10th). St Lawrence was a deacon with Pope Sixtus II. He oversaw the finances of the Church at Rome and when the persecution broke out against the Church in Rome, Pope Sixtus II was martyred and the emperor Valerian ordered Lawrence to bring to him the wealth of the Church. Lawrence gathered the real wealth of the church, that is, the people in need, the sick, the poor, the people with disability and presented them to the emperor telling him, these are the riches of the Church. Despite knowing that his life is in danger, Lawrence dared to challenge the authority and died a martyr’s death. How could he do that? What prompted him to act in this way? Where did he get the strength to stand up against the supreme authority of his time? It is from nowhere but from the person of Jesus, the one who tells us “I am the Living Bread, I am the Bread of Life.”
We may not face such a grave challenge in our life in the present age. We may not have to face the ultimate authority and stand up to our faith in the face of the persecution. We may not even have to answer to our faith to anyone around us, but do we really live our faith? Do we witness to our faith? Do we proclaim our faith through our life? Sadly, we don’t. Quite often we have become lukewarm in living who we are called to be.
When Jesus says, “I am the living bread,” he does not just speak of the Holy Communion at a Sunday Mass, he talks about his entire life; the way he lived, the way he reached out to the needy, the way he went about doing good, the way he preached. Through all this he became a living bread. He became an example to his followers. He showed them what it is to be Messiah, not a mighty king, but a humble servant. St Lawrence got it right, Mother Teresa got it right and so did many other people, not just Christians, got it right. What about me? Have I got it right?
Let us reflect upon this today, dear friends, and see how can we be that living bread in our everyday life.