DO YOU DESIRE THE BREAD OF ETERNAL LIFE?
August 19, 2018
Fr. Praveen Francis Kurisingal

In Jn 6:51-58 we see that Jesus’ listeners quarreled amongst themselves. Because Jesus says, “I am the bread that came down from heaven: whoever eats this bread will live forever.” Who can eat the flesh of a man? So, they object, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?”
 
Before examining the Lord’s reply, let’s place today’s Gospel passage in its proper context of John 6. There’s a unified theme closely linking the three parts of this chapter. First, the chapter begins with Jesus feeding the crowd of 5000 by multiplying five small loaves of bread. But Jesus’ simple blessing dispenses with both time and effort. Later that night, while the disciples are struggling to steer their boat on the storm swept sea, Jesus comes walking towards them on the surface of the water. In this case Jesus was declaring, “I can suspend the laws of nature for My BODY.” Later that afternoon, some of the crowd that had been fed, came to Jesus on the other side of the lake in order to make Him their ‘bread king.’ Jesus used the occasion to promise that someday He would give a special BREAD that would be His own BODY.
 
In short, when He fed those hungry thousands with only five small loaves, He proved, “I can do what I want with bread.” And by walking on the water, He confirmed, “I can do what I want with My body.”
 
When did Jesus fulfill the awesome promise? At the Last Supper, when He blessed the bread and wine saying, “ This is the cup of my blood …” For almost 2000 years the Church has firmly taught that whenever the priest at Mass does what Jesus did at the Last Supper, the bread and wine are changed in substance to the Lord’s true flesh and blood, even though they are physically remain the bread and wine. The accidentals of the bread and wine stay the same; the substance changes into the Lord’s own body and blood, soul and divinity. This marvelous change the Church calls transubstantiation.
 
We cannot understand this by our intellect but by faith. Faith creates an intimate relationship with us. So, Jesus wishes to become the bread of life eternal and that desire is realized in His sacrificial death. All these are done and is doing the same in the Sacrament of the Eucharist for making a good relationship with us, to love us and show the love of God. That’s why when some disciples refused to accept this teaching, Jesus allowed them to walk off and leave Him. He did not call them back by rationalizing, “Wait, you’re misunderstanding Me! I’[m only referring to a symbolic eating of My flesh.” No, He turned to the twelve and asked, “Do you want to leave Me too?” Jesus really wished to teach them that the presence He spoke of was not symbolic, but real. So serious examination of John 6 leaves no room for doubt that Jesus is really, truly and substantially present in the Eucharist to reveal His love. If He could do miracles, if He could cure the sick, if He could raise the dead, He can be present really, truly and substantially in the Eucharist. All these are to reveal His love.
 
So love demands union. The greater the love, the more intimate is the union desired. The lover longs to be joined to the beloved—in thought, in letters, in phone conversations, in physical presence. So Jesus’ love demands our response, that is, our eagerness to eat this bread, our eagerness to get in touch with Jesus and His love. That intimate relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ is the fullness of life. Jesus, “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me and I in him.” It is the will of God that we have life in its fullness. This fullness of life is in Christ, the living bread of life.
 
So today St. Paul, through his teaching warns us, “ do not continue in ignorance but try to understand what the will of the Lord is.” So, let us humble ourselves rather than remain stubborn like the Jews and come to the banquet of the body and blood of Christ. Let us stop doubting the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Instead, let us make efforts to be reconciled to Christ the living bread of life.  
I know that some of us have many reasons that seem genuine for staying away from the Holy Eucharist. But they are doubting without tasting this love by receiving the Bread of Life. All we need to do is to make efforts by clearing all the obstacles that block our spiritual eyes, minds and ways. That is, those obstacles preventing us from receiving the body and blood of Christ. Once again today, the psalmist tells us, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

ARE YOU EATING MANNA, OR THE BREAD OF LIFE?
August 12, 2018
Fr. Bosco Padamattummal

In John’s Gospel we read Jesus fed 5000 people with five loaves and two fish. Today He challenges the people to consider what kind of bread they are seeking and eating, perishable or imperishable, then He declares Himself to be “the bread of life,” “the living bread that came down from heaven.” That’s when the conflict started. “The Jews began to complain about Jesus. “He didn’t come from heaven. We know all about Him. He’s Mary and Joseph’s boy.” They know facts about Jesus but they don’t really know Him or where He comes from. He doesn’t look a thing like the bread they or their ancestors have eaten. When it comes to bread they don’t expect any more than the manna their ancestors got in the wilderness. Jesus tells them to be quiet and stop complaining. “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died…. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.” Jesus offers them a choice, living bread or manna, life or death. That is the same choice He sets before us.

The conflict for the Jews is not so much about Jesus but about their frame of reference, the box they have created for God. Jesus is challenging them to step outside of the established, comfortable, and familiar context they have created for themselves. He refuses to be limited by either their understandings or their misunderstandings. He invites them to live a new life, a larger life, a life that springs from but is not bound by the past or the context they have created for themselves. He invites them to eat new bread. When John speaks of the Jews He is not referring to the Jewish people, individually or collectively. He is referring to any person or group who opposes Jesus, who refuses to see and understand the signs, who would separate the gift of bread from the giver of life. The Jews could be anyone who acts in this way. In this case it just happens to be the religious leaders and authorities of Jesus’ day.

We are not so different from the Jews. We too have our own frames of reference. When we live only from our personal frame of reference we live hungry, empty lives. We work for manna rather than opening ourselves to receive the gift of the bread of life. No matter how much manna we collect and eat we can never satisfy ourselves. Manna might fill our bellies but it leaves our souls grumbling. Often the things we have done and left undone prevent us from eating the bread of life or come to the table of the Lord. Sometimes our patterns of thinking, believing, the way we see the world, each other, or ourselves convince us there is no other bread and we should just settle for the same old manna our ancestors ate in the wilderness. Other times our history, fears, anxieties, guilt, regrets, pain, and losses become so firmly established we are deceived into believing that we are not even hungry.

We are not destined to eat manna that perishes for the rest of our lives. Our past, our history, never keep us away from the bread of life that is broken at this altar. The living bread has come down from heaven to feed each one of us. Every moment of every day God invites us to eat new bread, to step out of the old context into a new way of living and being. God gives us bread from heaven, knowing that we are hungry. Our conflicts, our restlessness, our deep longings, our desires to love and be loved are hunger pains by which the Father draws us to His Son at this altar; Let us trust Him. Jesus makes a claim only God can make, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in Me will never be thirsty.”

Let me conclude with these words one teenager wrote about the Eucharist. At the Last Supper when Jesus took bread and in the end of the consecration He said, “Do this in memory of me”.  “Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacle of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting in an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; ….. for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so wounded and prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonization of St. Joan of Arc—one could fill many pages with the reasons why people have done this, And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays and weekdays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of world Eucharist is celebrated.”

ARE YOU BEING FED BY THE BREAD OF LIFE?
August 5, 2018
Fr. Bosco Padamattummal

Today we continue with the 6th chapter of John on Jesus as the Bread of Life. In last Sunday’s Gospel we saw how excited the people were after Jesus had fed them with just a few loaves and fish. They were so excited that they wanted to make Him king. "This really is the prophet who is to come into the world", they said. Their being fed with bread reminds them of Moses who fed the people with manna (described in today’s First Reading) as well as an expression of the expected coming of the Messiah-King. But Jesus had fled to the mountains. He was indeed their Messiah-King but not in this way. The disciples, too, have been packed off in a boat in case they got the wrong ideas and tried to take advantage of Jesus’ popularity.
The people now set off to Capernaum on the other side of the lake looking for Jesus. After finding Him they asked, "When did you come here?" It is one of those ironic questions that John loves. A seemingly innocent and simple question which actually touches on the real origins and identity of Jesus. 
Jesus tells them they are looking for Him not because they have seen signs but because they had got a lot of bread to eat. They did not realise that the feeding itself was a spectacular sign pointing to something much deeper than the material bread they enjoyed. A food that endures forever and this is the real food that Jesus has come to offer. But they still have not grasped what He is saying to them. 
What must we do, they asked, to get this bread of life? The answer was simple and straightforward: "You must believe in the one God has sent." That is all and it is everything: to believe in Jesus, that is, to commit oneself totally and unconditionally to His Way. To believe is an act of faith, of trust and a letting go. It is much more than just accepting what a person says as being true. But the people are still not satisfied. They ask for a sign which would give them a reason for believing in Jesus. They cite the example of the manna that Moses had fed the people with for 40 years in the desert. To this request Jesus replies: First, the manna came from God, not Moses. Second, the real bread that comes from God is not material, it comes directly from God and it is life-giving. 
"Oh, let’s have some of that bread," Jesus’ listeners cried, hearing only the literal meaning of His words. (It reminds us of the Samaritan woman by the well of Jacob who asked Jesus for the water of life after which she would never be thirsty again.) Jesus then answers simply: "I AM the Bread of Life." This is much more than a statement of fact; the phrase "I AM" is the name of God given to Moses at the burning bush. It is the first of seven ‘I AM’ statements uttered by Jesus in John’s gospel, all pointing to his divine origin. 
The others are: 
I AM the Light of the World (8:12, 9:5) 
I AM the Gate (10:7,9)
I AM the Good Shepherd (10:11,14)
I AM the Resurrection and the Life (11:25)
I AM the Way: the Truth and the Life (14:6)
I AM the Vine (15:1,5). 
Now, however, we need to ask: How is Jesus bread and how are we to get it? By going to Jesus, by becoming His close companion (one who shares bread from the Latin ‘cum’=with and ‘panis’=bread) and follower. "Who comes to me will never be hungry." By believing in Jesus, by an unconditional and total giving of self to Him. "Who believes in Me will never thirst." It is not sufficient to talk and sing, it is necessary to live and to practice. The community constructed on the foundation of the new law will remain standing at the moment of the storm. The two last scenarios of the Sermon on the Mount, the house built on the rock (Mt 7:24-25) and the house built on sand (Mt 7:26-27), illustrate these contradictions. By means of these, Matthew denounces, and at the same time tries to correct, the separation between faith and life, between speaking and doing, between teaching and practicing. Jesus made the same recommendation to the woman who praised Mary, His Mother. Jesus answered: “Blessed rather are those who listen to the Word of God and put it into practice” (Lk 11:28).
Dear brothers and sisters let us look at how Jesus nourishes us and becomes our food and drink:
a. By giving us His Word in the Scriptures.
In this way He feeds our minds and hearts, enriches and gives meaning and direction to our lives. The Word of God in the scriptures is really food and, in so far as the Bible is unknown to us, we are being starved of food that we really need.
b. Through His Church: through the fellowship and mutual support we get through our involvement and participation in a Christian community.
c. Through every loving and nourishing experience coming to us through people, books, radio, tv, the world of nature – in short, through everything which enriches and gives more meaning and understanding in our lives, increases our feeling of being loved and of self-worth.
d. Through the Eucharist, the sign by which we celebrate God’s love shown to us through the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and where we give thanks for all the nourishing ways by which God, through Jesus, comes into our daily lives. The fact that we are indeed being fed and nourished is shown by the way we live our lives and share what we have received with others who are still hungry for life and meaning. As the letter to the Ephesians says in today’s Second Reading: "Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth." This is exactly what happens when we have been fed by the Bread of Life. 

A VOICE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS
July 29, 2018
Fr. Sean Connolly

Later this year, Blessed Paul VI will be raised to the altars as a saint. The canonization is expected to take place in late October at the close of a meeting of the Synod of Bishops. It is fitting that his canonization is taking place this year, which marks the 50th anniversary of what Pope Paul is perhaps best known for—his controversial encyclical Humanae Vitae.

This significant document reaffirms the Church’s condemnation of artificial “birth control”—a misnamed concept, because as G.K. Chesterton cleverly puts it, “what is quaintly called Birth Control…is in fact, of course, a scheme for preventing birth in order to escape control” (The Well and the Shallows). Not only is this encyclical clarifying, it has proven to be prophetic. The world did not listen to Pope Paul in 1968 and the stark warnings he gave about what the widespread acceptance of contraception would mean for society have all come to pass. And now, a half-century later, the world no longer remembers what he even said in the first place. We would do well to honor the memory of this soon-to-be-sainted pontiff by using this anniversary year to recall and boldly proclaim his oft-neglected message on the nature, purpose, and dignity of married love....

Today, the most transient and material things of this world—clothes, cars, expensive vacations—are more desired than the joy of children. Our secular world has forgotten God and the greatest blessing He gives to any family—new life. Malcolm Muggeridge poignantly details what our society has lost sight of:

There is no beauty, there is no joy, there is no compensation that anything could offer in the way of leisure, of so-called freedom from domestic duties, which could possibly compensate for one-thousandth part of the joy that an old man feels when he sees this beautiful thing: life beginning again as his ends, in those children that have come into the world through his love and through a marriage which has lasted through 50 or more years. I assure you that what I say to you is true, and that when you are that age there is nothing that this world can offer in the way of success, in the way of adventure, in the way of honors, in the way of variety, in the way of so-called freedom, which could come within a hundredth part of measuring up to that wonderful sense of having been used as an instrument, not in the achievement of some stupid kind of personal erotic excitement, but in the realization of this wonderful thing—human procreation.

Pope Paul VI stood firm in the midst of the moral permissiveness which came under the guise of “freedom” in the 1960s and boldly proclaimed the truth of married love. But his message was a like a voice crying out in the wilderness. It is the cause of great controversy, and is despised and rejected. But what ultimately, is the message of Humanae Vitae? Put very briefly: that the long and uncomplicated tradition of a man and a woman falling in love, getting married, and having children is a good thing. That the family is the most important unit of society. And that the natural order of all this should be respected. That this should be the subject of controversy shows how society has lost its way. May the message of the soon-to-be Saint Paul VI, in Humanae Vitae, help us to find it again.

THE DIVIDING WALL IS DOWN!
July 22, 2018
Deacon Dennis Walters

Today’s second reading from Ephesians continues Paul’s discussion of God’s plan from last week’s reading; namely, how Jesus has broken down the “wall of enmity” between Jew and Gentile. That expression is a metaphor, but it originates from a concrete fact.

    The Jerusalem Temple in Paul’s (and Jesus’) day had a large courtyard around the sanctuary that was divided in the middle by a wall (red arrow). Anyone entering the Temple would come into the outer section, but only Jews (both men and women) could pass through a series of gates to the inner court. Archeologists have found one of the stone plaques posted outside the gates with a stark warning engraved in Greek:  “No man of another race is to enter within the fence and enclosure around the Temple. Whoever is caught will have only himself to thank for the death which will follow.”

    The restrictions that governed worship carried over into social life. The Torah specified that Israelites were not to marry Gentile women lest their Gentile wives draw them away from fidelity to the Law. To draw a protective “fence” around the Law, later regulations forbade Jews from eating with Gentiles, both because the food would probably not be kosher but also because socializing with Gentiles implied assimilation with them. Over time, protective regulations like these hardened into mutual suspicion, prejudice, and contempt.

    Paul proclaims that Jesus, God the Son made flesh, came in human flesh to knock down the wall of division between Jew and Gentile. There’s a progression or sequence in how Jesus did this, all of it tied in with the effects of His death on the cross.  

First, He created “in Himself one new person in place of the two.”  In other words, the “one new person” is everyone incorporated into the Body of Christ through baptism, which means that Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians together are that “one new person” in Jesus Himself. So there aren’t two antagonistic groups any more; Jesus is Himself the peace — the shalom, the wellness, the right ordering of relationships — between the two. Both are now one.  

Second, this “one new person” is now reconciled in Jesus to the Father through the cross.  Just as the cross killed Jesus the man, so it kills the enmity between men. Thus, the law that prompted the enmity between Jew and Gentile is done away with. Jesus came to “preach peace to you who were far off [Gentiles] and peace to those who were near [Jews]” because through the Son those who are incorporated into Him “both have access to the Father.”

    Scripture is addressed to people of all ages, and it’s not hard to see how this passage applies to us today. Everywhere we look, we see division, separation, and even enmity in society: sons and daughters from mothers and fathers, husbands from wives, men from women, native from immigrant, faith from faith, tribe from tribe, nation from nation. Pick any social issue and it seems that reasoned discussion about it has become all but impossible. Political correctness limits not only the realities we’re allowed to see (for example, that there are only two sexes) but even the words we’re allowed to use to describe them (some municipalities criminalize the use of the “binary pronouns” he and she). The wall of division is not only up, it’s being reinforced.

    The tendency to build walls is typical of human nature. “Good fences make good neighbors.” Good fences also wall neighbors off from one another, leading us eventually to ask (as the lawyer did to Jesus) “Who is my neighbor?” It’s true that one of the devil’s favorite strategies is to divide people; he’s done that since the beginning of history, and is succeeding remarkably well even now. It’s also true that we humans, given our tendency to prefer our own interests and pleasures to the good of others, cooperate in our own social disintegration even as we decry it.  

    One of Pope St. John Paul II’s favorite words was “solidarity,” which for him was the basis on which a human and a Christian community is built. Our culture is now facing a crisis of solidarity caused in part by the culture’s drive toward protected individual and incompatible rights. As noted by the editor of this month’s First Things magazine, “Our problem is a loss of solidarity, a loss caused by the weakening of the three necessary societies”; namely, the Church community, the political community, and the marriage community.

    Yet the solution for us is the same as it was between Jews and Gentiles. As naïve or impractical as it may sound, Jesus is still the peace between us. He is the reality. In Him we are incorporated as “one new person in place of the two.”  We are part of each other; and even though we are distinct persons, in Jesus we belong to each other and all have the same access to the Father. This theological understanding becomes a true social reality for us when we cultivate personal relationships with Jesus first and then with each other.  To that end, Paul spends the rest of Ephesians, especially Chapters 4-6, detailing how to break down walls of division between Christian and Christian.

His was good advice for the Ephesian church. It’s good advice for us, too.

DOES GOD HAVE A PLAN?
July 15, 2018
Deacon Dennis Walters

    He does, and in today’s second reading Paul is excited to tell you (in global terms) what it is.

    The excitement comes through in the Greek, which is one long, complex sentence that rushes through eleven verses from start to finish: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens …” — and so he’s off and running. Our English translation breaks Paul’s huge sentence into three paragraphs and several sentences in an effort to parse out the elements of the plan. (The rest of Ephesians will slow down and explain how the plan works.)

    The churches Paul was writing to began primarily among Christian Jews, among whom Gentiles were being incorporated through baptism. As you read the passage, pay attention to the personal pronouns “we” (Jewish Christians), and “you” (Gentile Christian newcomers). God’s plan takes root with the “we,” but then branches out to include the “you.”

    The plan starts before the creation of the universe. From eternity, God chose the “we” (Jewish Christians) to be “holy and without blemish.” The word “holy” here doesn’t mean virtuous or morally perfect, but “set apart” or dedicated as an offering “without blemish” to God, the way Temple sacrifices were selected without blemish or physical defect in order to be acceptable.  

    Why? Because the Father’s love destined the “we” to be adopted into His Trinitarian family. In Paul’s Roman culture, adoption meant that the adopted child shared all the rights and privileges of natural-born children, including inheritance rights — pretty much what adoption means for unrelated children taken into today’s families. The Father’s motive comes from “the favor of His will” through the Messiah Jesus, a favor that the “we” did not earn or deserve.

    Changing focus a bit, Paul states that in the Messiah Jesus, the “we” “have redemption by His blood.” (Don’t worry: he’ll get to the “you” in a minute.) In other words, through the blood-sacrifice of His natural Son, the adopted children have been ransomed or purchased back from slavery to “transgressions” (original sin, an inherited tendency to bad behavior). That redemption accords naturally with God’s desire to give grace, His tendency to shower on creatures benefits in lavish abundance. Furthermore, “in all wisdom and insight” the Father has revealed to His adopted children what He is up to. His long-range plan is “for the fullness of times,” when everything God created reaches a kind of completion or “summing up” in Jesus, both in heaven and here on earth.

    According to his understanding as a Jew and a Christian, Paul alludes to the Father’s choice of the Israelite people as a “chosen people” — again harking back to the idea of a holy people, one intentionally and from all eternity set apart for Himself. Divine election is their destiny; and the reason for it is to exist “for the praise of His glory — we [Jewish Christians], who first hoped in Christ.” The gradual revelation of that “hope in Christ” took place through what we call the Old Testament, in which the expectation of a Messiah came to light through history, to be finally realized in Jesus the Son.

    Now Paul gets to the “you” (us Gentile Christians). If the Jewish people were chosen by the Father “in Him” (the Son), then “in Him you also, who have heard the word of the truth, the Gospel of your salvation, and have believed in Him,” have come into the adopted family as well. The “we” (Jewish Christians) came into adoption because “we” were chosen as a people. “You” (Gentile Christians) came into adoption through faith — you believed the good news you heard and acted on it. You elected to be baptized, and that baptism placed the seal of the Holy Spirit on you. The seal verifies that you belong to the Father and are under His protection. According to Paul, the seal of the Holy Spirit in baptism is a “down payment” on your inheritance. Just as the down payment on a house means that when you close on the house you have the right to move into it, so you have the privilege now of enjoying the first stages of your final inheritance in God’s house.

At this point, God’s long-range plan for mankind becomes your near-term plan. Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist are called “sacraments of initiation” because they both inaugurate and maintain the Christian life. Those sacraments launched you into a life of faith. As Paul explains in Chapters Two and Three (addressed mainly to “you Gentiles”), Baptism and Confirmation are not just moments in your past, but are continuing realities, the way a spring begins a river. Christianity is a way of life that once begun is meant to keep growing. Of course, life requires food, which the Eucharist provides. But a living faith requires more. It requires movement, activity, behavior appropriate to believers, since “faith without works is dead” (Jas. 2:17).  Ephesians 4 through 6 spell out the kinds of behavior that make your faith a living reality.

Does God have a plan? He does — one for the human race as a whole, and one for you in particular. You’ll have to work out the specifics, but the general goal still applies you: that your life be “holy and without blemish before Him,” since you are destined as a gift to God “to the praise of His glory.”