“They All Ate And Were Satisfied.”
-Luke 9:17
It’s hard enough trying to get a handful of people to agree on what they want for dinner. Imagine satisfying a crowd of more than five thousand people. Yet that is precisely what Jesus does in today’s Gospel.
Each person in that crowd had his or her own needs and desires, a unique reason to follow Jesus and spend the whole day listening to him. And that need was deeper than their hunger for food. Even when their stomachs started to growl, they remained in his presence.
In fact, Jesus himself was the spiritual food that nourished their hearts, minds and souls. And he would give himself even as the Bread of Life to nourish their bodies.
God, who created us body and soul in his image and likeness, knows well all that we need. And in sending his only-begotten Son, the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, God the Father gave us all we need.
On this feast of the precious Body and Blood of Christ, we, like the crowds in the Gospel, pause to be in the presence of this same Jesus, the living Bread that comes down from heaven.
In the Old Testament, God fed his people with manna in the desert. Each morning they gathered all they needed for the day. If they gathered more than they needed, the excess would spoil. Because the Lord himself was giving them this food, and he would give it fresh with each new day.
Jesus himself taught us to ask our Father for “our daily bread.” In asking confidently and persistently for the bread that nourishes us, we come to know more deeply God himself who provides this bread and is present to us every step of our way through this life.
This is important for us to recall in the troubled days in which we are living. Like God’s people in the desert, we can continually be tempted to forget that God himself is with us even in the desert. We may find ourselves weary and hungry, like the crowds in the Gospel. Our need today, our hunger, is not a surprise to God.
Today’s Eucharistic Procession after the 10:45 Mass, is a concrete expression of our walking with God. Of God, walking with us. The one bread, which is the very Body, Blood Soul and Divinity of Jesus, which nourishes us all, is also the sustenance that each of us needs.
Jesus asked at one point, “When the Son of man returns, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8)
Asking for our daily bread, receiving worthily the Eucharist, continually nourishes our faith, and unites us with God’s people through all the ages – with all the needs of the past, the future and this present moment. What we do at Mass is what St. Paul himself received and handed on, to sustain our faith. Recognizing Christ in our midst in the Eucharist, we will come to recognize him when he comes again, and in him we will all be satisfied.
-Fr. Tom
Brothers and sisters: I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. -1 Corinthains 11:23-26
