ONLY GOD CAN SATISFY OUR SPIRITUAL HUNGER.
We have various pangs of hunger that need to be satisfied but, above them, all is the spiritual hunger that only God can spiritually satisfy in us. This hunger, desire or longing for love, care, recognition, fame or money and material things are ways man searches out his destiny.
Sometimes in our hunger or quest for life and its meanings, we plunge ourselves into all sorts of things to get our hunger or thirst satisfied. There is an intangible hunger that we cannot name or seem to articulate that well up in our being. Yet, each we plunge ourselves to fill up our spiritual hunger, the more we feel empty and dissatisfied. Life cannot be satisfied with material or physical needs. There is more to life than these.
Hence, we must seek God and his kingdom, and every other satisfaction will be added unto our life. The Christian life invites and challenges us to fill up our spiritual hunger with the presence, word and body of Christ. We need to give priority to our spiritual hunger or nourishment above every other quest.
OUR THEME
The readings of this Sunday challenge and encourage us to be more concerned with spiritual food than with physical food. We are also admonished to get our spiritual food regularly from http://frtonyshomilies.com/o-t-xviii-sunday-august-1-2021/the Word of God and the Holy Eucharist – the Heavenly Bread. This is because only God can satisfy the various forms of our spiritual hunger.
Just like last Sunday, we are reminded of the providence of a loving and caring God who satisfies our spiritual and physical needs. We need to fill our hunger and thirst for the bread of eternal life – the Holy Eucharist.
As human beings, we hunger for many things besides food and material possessions. We have a hunger to be recognized and honoured and to love and be loved. The human desire to be helped, to be consoled, to be encouraged people, and to be received with gratitude. But only God can satisfy our various forms of spiritual hunger. St. Augustine said: “O God, You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you”.
FIRST READING: EXODUS 16:2-4, 12-15
The loving and caring God feeds the hungry, bitter, and stubborn people of Israel with manna and quails in their desert journey to the Promised Land. Despite their grumbling, murmuring and lack of faith in the God who rescued them from slavery in Egypt.
God gave them manna and quails with some strict rules on how to live on them. Therefore, teaching them to learn trust and dependence on God for their sustenance. As well as knowing that the heavenly food must not be wasted.
- This food narrative combines meat and bread to present dependence on the providence of God. The story of food or bread from heaven is both of gift and a test from God.
- It is a story that recounts the rebellion of the children of Israel: the rebellion against God and the priestly agents, in this case, Moses and Aaron.
- Nonetheless, God is responsive and listens. God also provides provision despite the complaints and impatience.
- It is a story for us to learn gratitude for the many blessings we have received and patience in a moment of lack or needs to wait on God and his time.
- It is a story that invites us to total dependence on God, knowing he loves and cares about us despite our rough journey of life.
In Psalm 78, the psalmist invites us to sing the praises to the Lord, who provides his people with the bread from heaven. The heavenly food and bread of the angels nourish our spiritual hunger for the Lord.
SECOND READING: EPHESIANS 4:17, 20-24
The invitation of Paul to us today is to give up your aimless or fruitless lifestyle and embrace goodness and truth in Christ Jesus. St. Paul challenged the Ephesian Christians to give up the old self of anger, lust, ignorance, hardness of heart, greed, darkness, and corruption. This challenge extends to us today to live an authentic Christian life.
For Paul, a Christless man lives an insatiable life of arrogant greediness, sexual lust or desires or worldly passion. Paul sees the irresistible desires of the Christless man as having three effects on him and others.
His heart is so transfixed that he does not see or even aware that his lifestyle is sinful or godless.
He is so dominated by sin that he also lost his sense of shame and decency.
A Christless man loses his sense of mercy and empathy and is blinded by his desires. That he does not care whose life he injured and whose innocence he destroyed so long as these desires were satisfied.
While striving to renew ourselves anew in Christ Jesus through a virtuous lifestyle of purity, truth, righteousness and holiness. So that our Christian lives become a testimonial life of grace, mercy and peace in Christ through the Holy Spirit.
The second reading is part of an opening exhortation of Paul to the Ephesian Christians to live a “life worthy of the calling”. Hence, St. Paul advises the Ephesians to satisfy their spiritual hunger by turning away from their former evil ways and leading renewed lives of love, kindness, compassion and forgiveness.
Obviously, our spiritual renewal to live a life of truthfulness, righteousness and holiness is only possible through our intimate connection to Christ. He is the only one who could satisfy our spiritual hunger or quest for a life of wholeness in God.
Consequently, having been nourished by the Bread from Heaven and the word of God, we need to bear witness to Christ by living lives renewed by the Holy Spirit. This is the Christian life we are called to and admonish to live out worthy of our calling in Christ Jesus.
THE GOSPEL: JOHN 6:24-35
Jesus did not invite or encourage us to seek out the spiritual food that lasts. He is the ultimate bread from heaven offers eternal life to us who eat or partake of Him.
The people, witnessing the multiplication of the loaves of bread by Christ. The timely intervention of God to show to them as a loving God who cares about the spiritual and physical needs. They wanted to make Christ a King who will provide for their needs. So, they passionately sought after Christ to give more earthly food.
Jesus, seeing this mistake of his identity and the purpose of his mission, challenge them immediately. He exposed their intention and invited them to seek spiritual food that lasts into eternity and is not perishable.
It was a crowd that want to learn, so they asked Jesus what they must do to perform the works of God? Thus, creating a moment of opportunity for Christ to teach and expose them to the Will of God, his Father.
BELIEF IN THE ONE GOD SENT THROUGH FAITH
For Jesus, to do the work of God is to believe in him whom he had sent Christ the Messiah to save mankind. Paul would have it put this way; the one work that God desires from man is faith.
Now, what does faith mean? It means being in such a relationship with God that we are his friends. That means we are no longer terrified of him anymore but knowing him as our Father and friend. And giving him the trust and the obedience and the submission which naturally arise from this new relationship. How does believing in Jesus tie-up with that?
It is because Jesus came to tell us that God is our Father who loves us and wants nothing more than to forgive. He saves us from the old distance and enmity life with God through a new relationship of love, mercy and peace.
The essence of the Christian life is a new relationship to God, a relationship offered by him and made possible by the revelation which Jesus gave us of him. A relationship that is based on service, purity and trust, which are the reflection of God. This is the work that God wishes us and enables us to perform.
CHRIST IS OUR SATISFACTION
The work and mission of God for them and us is to believe in him: Christ, whom God has sent into the world for our salvation. More curiosity led them to ask a further question for a sign from heaven with allusion to the experience of their forefathers with Moses in the desert. When manna fell from heaven to feed them.
In the usual way of Christ, he begins with familiar things to drive the point of Spiritual meaning and significance. He let them know it was not Moses but God, the Father, who gave that heavenly food in the desert.
Then, he refers them to the bread or food that lasts forever whom God will give through him. They wanted that food and pleaded with Christ to provide them with that bread that lasts forever. A perfect moment for Christ to redirect them to himself not only as of the incarnated Word of God but also a living Bread that fills and satisfies.
Christ alone can satisfy the hunger of the human. Our human hunger for truth, love and life can alone be abundantly satisfied by Christ alone.
I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE
This is one of the fundamental declarations of Jesus in the gospel of John. It is not only a beautiful or poetic phrase. It expresses the essence of Christ to us. What did Jesus mean when he said, “I am the bread of life”. An analysis step by step will review what Jesus meant:
- Bread sustains life. It is that without which life cannot go on.
- What is life? Clearly, the life, Jesus meant something far more than mere physical existence. What is this new spiritual meaning of life?
- Real-life is the new relationship with God, that relationship of trust and obedience and love of which we have already thought.
- That relationship is made possible only by Jesus Christ. Apart from him, no one can enter into it.
- That is to say, without Jesus, there may be existence, but not life.
- Therefore, if Jesus is the essence of life, he may be described as the bread of life. The hunger of the human situation is ended when we know Christ, and through Christ, come to know God. The restless soul is at rest; the hungry heart is satisfied.
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
The gospel of today opens out to us the stages of the Christian life in Christ Jesus.
- We see Jesus. We see him in the pages of the New Testament. We also encounter him in the teaching of the church. We meet Christ in our daily human experience either with the Word of God, or the Eucharist, or our brothers and sisters.
- Having seen him, we come to him. We regard him not as some distant hero and pattern, not as a figure in a book, but as someone accessible. Jesus is our Lord and saviour and not just a historical figure or legend.
- We believe in him. That is to say, we accept him as our personal Lord and Saviour. He is the final authority on God, on man, on life. That means that our coming is not a matter of mere interest nor a meeting on equal terms; it is essentially a submission.
- This process gives us life. That is to say, it puts us into a new and lovely relationship with God. Where he becomes an intimate friend. We are now at home with the one whom we feared or never knew.
- The possibility of this intimacy is free and universal where there is an invitation is to all men. The bread of life is ours for the taking.
- The only way to that new relationship is through Jesus. Without him, it never would have been possible, and apart from him, it is still impossible. No searching of the human mind or longing of the human heart can fully find God apart from Jesus.
- At the back of the whole process is God. It is those whom God has given him who come to Christ. God does not only provide the goal. He moves in the human heart to awaken a desire for him. And God continues to work in the human soul to take away the rebellion and the pride which would hinder the great submission. We could never even have sought him unless he had already found us.
- There remains that stubborn something that enables us to refuse the offer of God. In the last analysis, the one thing which defeats God is the defiance of the human heart. Life is there for the taking—or the refusing.
When we take, two things happen. First, into life enters new satisfaction. The hunger and the thirst are gone. The human heart finds what it was searching for, and life ceases to be mere existence and becomes a thing at once of thrill and peace.
Second, even beyond life, we are safe. Even on the last day when things end, we are stiff secure. As a great commentator said, Christ, brings us to the haven beyond which there is no danger.
The offer of Christ is life in time and eternity. That is the greatness and glory of which we cheat ourselves when we refuse his invitation.
FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS
- In your quest or search for life, do you focus on your stomach or your soul? Do you seek satisfaction in material things or spiritual things?
- Are you are a new and spiritual being in Christ Jesus? Or is your life soak with vices of your old self driven by your emotional and physical desires?
- Who is Jesus Christ to you? The bread of life who satisfies our spiritual hunger? Your Lord and Saviour with whom life take shape and purpose?
- Is your Christian life oriented in Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour spiritually? Or it is a mere religious or ritualistic performance?
In general, the readings of this Sunday encourage and challenge us to centre our Christian and spiritual life in Christ Jesus. We are admonished by the reflection of this Sunday to focus on our souls and not our stomachs. We invite to satisfy our spiritual hunger in Christ and not seek physical satisfaction. We are challenged to orient our Christian life as heaven-bound and not earthbound.
From readings, human existence has no life without Christ. It is so clear that amassing material things or seeking power and fame by many people are signs of spiritual emptiness. Hedonism is a result of human dissatisfaction with life without God. Therefore, we need to centre our life on Christ, who can and will satisfy our innermost spiritual hunger.
OUR PRAYER
Lord, the kingdom of God, is not all about food and drink, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Lord. Help us that materials benefits or food be not our reason for being Christian. And may we seek righteousness and Godliness in Christ Jesus: our bread of life who satisfy our spiritual hunger and neediness. Amen
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