This bread always

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.”

Homily

Hunger and thirst tune the mind, don’t they? Have you ever experienced biting and painful hunger such that if you don’t eat you will literally drop? What about a desperate search for a drink to quench a thirst which is causing you genuine discomfort? Our bodies have needs, and satisfying our hunger or thirst is fundamental to living. We are, however, so much more than just a body. The Church from the beginning has always taught that the human person is comprised of both a body and a soul. For sure, we need food and water for the body, but how is the soul nourished?

The soul is fed supremely in the Eucharist. What material food produces in our bodily life, the Eucharist wonderfully achieves in our spiritual life. Jesus is the Bread of Life. He is food for our soul, nourishing and sustaining us in this life and in the life to come. Every time we receive the Eucharist we know communion with the flesh of the risen Christ, a flesh given life and giving life through the Holy Spirit. This gift preserves, increases and renews the life of grace we received at our baptism. We cannot grow and mature in the Christian life unless we receive this bread of life.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church so wonderfully expresses it: ‘This growth in Christian life needs the nourishment of Eucharistic Communion, the bread for our pilgrimage until the moment of death, when it will be given to us as viaticum.’ (CCC 1392)

Physical hunger or thirst is easy to detect; spiritual hunger or thirst is harder, but when we do detect it, we become open and receptive to the promptings and leadings of the Holy Spirit. It is truly a gift of the Holy Spirit to know we are hungry and to know we are thirsty – for God, for his truth, for his love.

St Augustine of Hippo said: ‘Give me persons in love; they know what I mean. Give me those who yearn; give me those who are hungry; give me those far away in the desert, who are thirsty and sigh for the spring of the eternal country. Give me those kinds of people; they know what I mean. But if I speak to cold persons, they just do not know what I am talking about.’

‘Lord God, I hunger and thirst to know you, the Bread of Life, more and more each day.’