Alberic Jacovone OSB
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YEAR B
SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY - 30.7.06
2 Kg 4,42-4; Eph 4,1-6; Jn 6,1-15
Not on bread alone!
Bread as symbol of life. We are familiar with today’s story of the 5 loaves & 2 fish. All 4 Gospels present it: this year we skip Mark’s account & take it from John’s Chap. 6 . Its rich meaning will engage us for 5 Sundays. For a start, bread is the essential nourishment of human life in western culture. The Bible is full of insights as it shows the importance of bread. In its books & across many centuries, writers have reflected on the miracle of life, & how it’s to be enhanced & nourished. Slowly bread came to be seen as life’s main nourishment, that’s required to preserve & conserve health & well being. In ancient Babylonian legends, ‘Adapah’ was the first god-like ‘baker’, who taught humans how to cook bread. But in ancient biblical tradition (Genesis 3,19), Adam was told that he will ‘earn his bread by the sweat of his brow’. Here, bread stands for any nourishment. But slowly the Bible moves to discover that God’s creative wisdom & word is the real bread that can forever satisfy our hunger. This bread, God alone provides. In Exodus (16,14) & Psalms (78,25 & 104,15) the author marvels at the ancestors, who ate ‘bread from heaven, manna from above, bread of Angels’. Jesus himself quoted Deuteronomy (8,3) when, after his 40 days fast, he was tempted by the devil & said: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from God’. Finally, Book of Proverbs (9,5) presents bread in a spiritual banquet of divine wisdom: ‘Come & eat my bread, that I’ve prepared at my banquet’. So, the Bible gently guides us in shifting the meaning of bread: from seeing just a food for conserving material life, we are slowly led into a wider & more spiritual relevance of a bread that really nourishes us in our relationship with God.
Bread
as Eucharist. The
miracle of the multiplication of bread
in John’s Gospel was written many years after Mark’s account, recorded in
simple, unassuming words. John gives us the benefit of years of prayerful
re-discovery into new layers of meaning from material bread
to the awesome Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic bread. For a start, every time we (as disciples of Jesus) offer the
Lord’s Prayer (the ‘Our Father’), & pray the words ‘Give is this day
our daily bread’( Matt. 6,11), we
take it from Jesus, that we should ask for nourishment of mind & spirit,
& not simply for bread as
material food.
In Chapter 6, John develops the theme of bread in new, lofty ways: he speaks of a Bread of God, who is ‘the one who comes down from heaven &
gives life to the world’ (v.33); & here bread is symbolic of God’s gift of salvation, in its general
connotation. But he also builds up his symbolic language to propose Jesus’
Eucharistic & Real Presence & our participation in God’s life through
the Eucharistic bread: ‘I am the bread
of life, he who comes to me will never hunger...(v35). It is our Christian
conviction that bread, when blessed & consecrated, does make real our communion
with Christ. At the Last Supper, Jesus took bread, blessed & broke it & gave it to them saying: take
& eat, this is my body’ (Matt 26,26). Our Church understands the mystery
of the Eucharist as a real presence
of the Lord & a real union with him: ‘The bread which we break, is it not
a communion with the body of Christ?’ (1Cor. 10,16). Eating & consuming
are words that convey the sense of ‘receiving in oneself’. When bread
is transformed by the Incarnate Word, & is received in us with faith, it
becomes a sacramental symbol of the Jesus who said: ‘he who eats of me will
live for me’ (51). Today, read slowly Chap. 9 of John & reflect on the
depth of intimacy, God had established with us in Christ’s Eucharist.
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