Eighteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time, Cycle B-- New Manna

In our First Reading we heard Exodus 16:2, “The whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.”

It reminds me of the story of a lady who was a veritable fount of complaints. Her pastor came by to see her one day and she began to enumerate some of her complaints: “The neighbor’s children are so noisy . . . People at the church never come to see me . . . my arthritis is getting worse . . . the weather has been so terrible . . .” On and on she went with one complaint after the other. Finally, she said, “But do you know, Father, I have had the worst headache all week, but suddenly while talking with you, it’s gone.”

The pastor sighed and said, “Oh, no. Your headache didn’t disappear. I have it now.”

The Israelites complained about the food called manna, a miraculous bread-like wafer. The people realized that this was God’s provision for their desert journey, but they wanted more. “We want meat! they chanted, and they were talking about the good old days back in Egypt when they were slaves!

Are we tired of the manna? —God’s blessing and provision for our life? A lesson for us is that our hunger needs purification because our desires can be unruly; our Second Reading calls them “deceitful desires,” done in the futility of the mind with emptiness, purposelessness, and frustration (and complaining.)

Lack of faith by not believing in God or His words leads to spiritual death and since we have all sinned, we require rescue. Thank God for the coming of Christ, the incarnate God and who redeemed us by his Cross and Resurrection.

Food for the journey Jesus says in today’s Gospel is the new Manna, which is the Eucharist, the true bread from Heaven, which will give life to the world--"I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst."

Believing no longer means just thought, now belief has itself become incarnate. Believing means being nourished in the Eucharist. As Charles Peguy says, “You eat directly the good God; we feed directly from God. And there’s nothing closer than touching. There is nothing closer than food. Then that incorporation, then the incarnation of food.1

At the Olive Garden restaurant, they advertise that every entrée comes with their never-ending first course of soup or salad and breadsticks. After a couple additional soups or salads and breadsticks you would probably not want to eat again for a long time. Yet, Jesus says, “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life.”

The Eucharist is food and drink that lasts forever, that endures for eternal life. St. John Paul II says, “those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth, as the first fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality.”2

I conclude with a summary illustration:

e.g. Napoleon Bonaparte had conquered almost all of Europe with his might. No one could resist his leadership and war technique. Soon, he went to conquer Russia.

He moved to Russia with a large army. Knowing the advance of Napoleon, the Russian people destroyed all their fields and crops. Taking the cows with them they moved to the interior part of the country abandoning their houses.

The French army could find only the burnt-out fields and empty villages at their arrival in Russia. They were in trouble. They had nothing to eat. Soldiers starved to death. Then winter came. Napoleon was forced to call back his army. Only one sixth of Napoleon’s army survived on their return.

But then the enemies attacked Napoleon and his worn-out army. On March 30, 1814, the French army was defeated. Napoleon was dethroned and deported.

We do not want to have the food and drink which sustains us for eternal life ever to blocked or hidden.

As we lose our zeal for the Holy Eucharist, the Word of God proclaimed and prayer, we will feel a terrible scarcity of spiritual food. Reluctance to repent and aversion to sacraments will make us weak and morally powerless.

Knowing that we are fragile, Satan will start his direct fight against us. Therefore, we should never ignore the importance of the spiritual food of the Eucharist.

1. Charles Peguy, The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc, 35.

2. Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 18.