Ex 16:2-4, 12-15 | Eph 4:17, 20-24 | Jn 6:24-35
“I AM the Bread of Life”
It is not strange that some in the crowd who had witnessed the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves went looking for Jesus so desperately that they hired boats and crossed the sea to Capernaum to find him. But Jesus knew what they were thinking and challenged them.
“You are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” And then he said, “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.” To this they asked, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?”
Saint Paul answers this question for all of us very clearly in his letter to the Ephesians: “You must no longer live as the Gentiles do, corrupted through deceitful desires.” And of course, we can spell that out much more clearly as the greed, materialism, waste, selfishness and much more that we are tempted by in our own lives.
I ask the same question as I think of the millions of innocent children in the Sudan, Gaza, Yemen, Syria, Ukraine, and right here in our own country, who are suffering and dying of malnutrition and starvation, or those children who, if they live, will not develop physically or mentally. What must I do? What must we do? For I can do nothing alone. Pope Francis wisely calls on us to be a “synodal Church.” Synodality is about communion, participation and mission. It is walking together — not only with Christ, but as Christ — in the world today with the poor and rejected, as Jesus did.
Today’s Scripture reading from Exodus reminds us of God’s ever-loving presence and care for us. The Israelites were facing death by starvation in the wilderness. In response to Moses’ prayer for them, God sent a fine frosty substance that looked like dew on the ground. When they saw it, they asked in bewilderment, “What is it?” Moses responded, “It is the bread that God has given you to eat.” Amazingly, the Israelites were fed with manna for the next 40 years, until they reached habitable land on the border of Canaan.
There is a connection running through Scripture beginning with the Manna in the wilderness, through to Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves, to the changing of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ at the Last Supper, to the earliest practice of Christians sharing Eucharist at meals, to today as we gather around the altars throughout the world receiving the Bread of Life into our own bodies — thus enabling us to be true to our calling to bring God’s love to the world.
Jesus explained: “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.”
His followers responded, as we do today, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
And Jesus assures us, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”
To read other Scripture reflections published by the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, click here.
Maryknoll Sister Mary Ellen Manz, of Jamaica, New York, entered the Maryknoll Sisters Congregation in 1950. She served as a teacher and principal in Chile and South Sudan and now works in the Communications Office of the Maryknoll Sisters in Ossining, New York. The Sisters’ liaison to Maryknoll and Misioneros magazines, she has written many articles for publication.
Featured image: Bread is broken and shared. (Helena Yankovska via Unsplash)
