Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Reading
I
Ex 16:2-4, 12-15
The whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.
The Israelites said to them,
"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!"
Then the LORD said to Moses,
"I will now rain down bread from heaven for you.
Each day the people are to go out and gather their daily portion;
thus will I test them,
to see whether they follow my instructions or not.
"I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites.
Tell them: In the evening twilight you shall eat flesh,
and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread,
so that you may know that I, the LORD, am your God."
In the evening quail came up and covered the camp.
In the morning a dew lay all about the camp,
and when the dew evaporated, there on the surface of the desert
were fine flakes like hoarfrost on the ground.
On seeing it, the Israelites asked one another, "What is this?"
for they did not know what it was.
But Moses told them,
"This is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat."
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 78:3-4, 23-24,
25, 54
R (24b) The Lord gave them bread from heaven.
What we have heard and know,
and what our fathers have declared to us,
We will declare to the generation to come
the glorious deeds of the Lord and his strength
and the wonders that he wrought.
R The Lord gave them bread from heaven.
He commanded the skies above
and opened the doors of heaven;
he rained manna upon them for food
and gave them heavenly bread.
R The Lord gave them bread from heaven.
Man ate the bread of angels,
food he sent them in abundance.
And he brought them to his holy land,
to the mountains his right hand had won.
R The Lord gave them bread from heaven.
Reading II
Eph 4:17,
20-24
Brothers and sisters:
I declare and testify in the Lord
that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do,
in the futility of their minds;
that is not how you learned Christ,
assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him,
as truth is in Jesus,
that you should put away the old self of your former way of life,
corrupted through deceitful desires,
and be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
and put on the new self,
created in God's way in righteousness and holiness of truth.
Gospel
Jn 6:24-35
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there,
they themselves got into boats
and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
And when they found him across the sea they said to him,
"Rabbi, when did you get here?"
Jesus answered them and said,
"Amen, amen, I say to you,
you are looking for me not because you saw signs
but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Do not work for food that perishes
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.
For on him the Father, God, has set his seal."
So they said to him,
"What can we do to accomplish the works of God?"
Jesus answered and said to them,
"This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent."
So they said to him,
"What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?
What can you do?
Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written:
He gave them bread from heaven to eat."
So Jesus said to them,
"Amen, amen, I say to you,
it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven;
my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world."
So they said to him,
"Sir, give us this bread always."
Jesus said to them,
"I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
and whoever believes in me will never thirst."
In the First Reading, the Israelite’s undergo their second “test” in the wilderness (the first test was the bitter waters of Marah). The second test combines quails with manna according to the frequent biblical word pair “meat/food (bread). The story is also told in Num 11 in another version and in Psalm 105:40 and 78:17-31. However, in Psalm 78, the quails turn out to be poisonous, killing those who had craved them. Surprisingly, here the quails do not figure prominently in the story and in fact, are not mentioned after verse 13. The story focuses on the manna.
The people again murmur against Moses and Aaron, but their complaint is ultimately against Yahweh; they prefer Pharaoh’s sustenance in Egypt to Yahweh’s in the wilderness. As in the other pre-Sinai trials, Yahweh simply accedes to their request without rebuke. The people here are tested on their willingness to follow the instruction regarding the manna; sacred food must be gathered according to divine rubrics.
The quail is actually coturnix coturnix, a small migratory bird about 7½ inches long, brown or sandy color with yellowish streaks. It comes to Palestine and Sinai in March or April in great flocks. It usually follows the wind, but if the wind suddenly shifts, the entire flock may be forced to land, where, exhausted, it is easily caught. Manna is the name for the bread from heaven, derived by folk etymology from man hû, which means “what is it?” Manna is the honeylike dropping from the tamarisk tree of Palestine and Sinai, which the Bedouin of the Sinai call mann. These droppings are secretions from two kinds of scale lice, which suck large quantities of liquid from the twigs in spring in order to collect nitrogen for their grubs. It contains glucose and fructose but no protein and cannot be harvested in quantity. The Bible portrays manna as miraculous; it is not an everyday occurrence. The rubrics for dealing safely with this heavenly food are given later in the story and are twice disregarded by the people (verse 20 & 27), a hint of later disobedience to the law.
In the Second Reading, the author declares that we must no longer live as pagans. Just as in chap. 2:13, he again describes the worthlessness of paganism:
1 purposeless dispositions
2 darkened understanding
3 separated from the life of God due to ignorance and hardness of heart.
4 they have given themselves to immorality.
This type of lifestyle contrasts dramatically with what they had been taught when they learned about Jesus. They were taught to set aside that former manner of life and the old person corrupted by seductive passions and to be renewed by putting on a new person which is Christ himself.
In today’s Gospel Reading, the crowd that had been following Jesus follows him to Capernaum and thus provides the audience for the “Bread of Life” discourse that will follow. This discourse centers on one biblical text: “He gave them bread from heaven to eat”. This pivotal text is a loose combination of several possible Old Testament quotations:
“I will now rain down bread from heaven for you” (Ex 16:4)
“Food from heaven you gave them in their hunger” (Neh 9:15)
“He rained manna upon them for food and gave them heavenly bread” (Ps 78:24)
“ . . . and with bread from heaven he satisfied them” (Ps 105:40)
All or some of these associated texts have been combined into the one amalgam of verse 31. There is also a dialogue that ensues that points out some difficulties felt by both the Jews of Jesus’ time and the members of the Johannine community.
Jesus will not give a perishable food but rather an eternal superior food. Jesus is thus appears to be superior to Moses. The fact that he insists on “Bread from heaven” assures us that Jesus not only gives this bread but he is in fact this heavenly bread. This discourse, much like the Living Waters discourse that precedes it, assures us that God himself comes to satisfy our hunger and thirst.
In 1968, my parents, like many other Cuban families, made a decision that they wanted their children to live in a free country that would guarantee them their right to practice their religion. With great faith in God, my parents left the communist island and arrived here in Miami in May of that same year. Several weeks later while we were all having dinner, my older sister commented to my parents that to come to this country to eat eggs with rice, we should have stayed in Cuba. Obviously for a child what matters is immediate self gratification and my sister could not have understood the purpose of our leaving our friends and family, but her comments still pierced my parent’s heart like a sword. Today’s readings invite us to live not for things of this world but rather a life of faith. To live in faith is to see God’s work all around us and to notice his presence in everything.
Faith is much more than just prayer, although this plays a significant role in living a life of faith. Praying to God to petition his help in something is not the same as trusting in him to do what he knows to be best. What would happen if our prayer were to go unanswered? What if God’s answer is contrary to what we were asking? Would we loose our “faith”? Would we get angry and complain against God? The first reading paints a perfect picture of the reality of our human condition. God has consistently shown his people his love for them through wondrous signs and miracles, but when their stomach’s ached from hunger, God was quickly blamed. Similarly, Jesus reminds the people of their lack of faith when he comments that they “are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” He understands our desire for immediate gratification and challenges us to live in faith.
We need to see beyond the material things that come so nicely packaged in our consumer culture. We need to be driven by our trust in God’s word instead of the words of a slick marketing campaign, that tries to sell us what we only think we need. The problem is we’re never satisfied with what we have or can have - it’s just part of our human condition. In the same way, many people’s faith is dependent upon constant signs and miracles and despite how many of these they may have witnessed it’s never enough to satisfy them. We must accept Jesus’ invitation to believe in him, and to see beyond the mere material things of this world and live a life of faith.
New American Bible; Brown, R. K., and Comfort, P. W. (trans.) and Douglas, J. D., (ed.) “The New Greek-English Interlinear New Testament”; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; Childs, B. S., “The Book of Exodus”; Hyatt, J. P., “Exodus”; Bruce, F. F., “The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians”; Swain, L., “Ephesians”; Sanchez-Bosch, Jordi, "Escritos Paulinos”; Alegre, X., y Tuñi, J. O., “Escritos Joánicos y Cartas Católicas”; Barrett, C. K., The Gospel According to John”; Brown, R. E., “The Community of the Beloved Disciple”; Schnackenburg, R., The Gospel According to St. John”; Segovia, F. F., “Love Relationships in the Johannine Tradition”; “The Collegeville Bible Commentary”; Brown, Raymond E., S.S., “Introduction to the New Testament”; Brown, Fitzmyer, and Murphy (ed.) “The New Jerome Biblical Commentary”.
Deacon Lazaro J. Ulloa