043 18 th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings

Cycle B 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Exodus 16:2-4, 12 -15; Psalm 78:3-4, 23, 25, 54; Ephesians 4: 17, 20-24; John 6: 24-25

Homily Theme

Miracle Bread from Heaven

In the First Reading, the Jews bored in the desert, prefer to return to their previous slavery in Egypt. They grumble about Moses and Aaron who are the appointed leaders chosen by God for them. God in His merciful plan feeds them daily with Miracle Bread from Heaven. God supplies us with daily Miracle Bread from Heaven also, but many still find it boring and complain and grumble about the leaders of Church, .like the Jews before them. They long for more excitement and seek it outside of the plan that God has laid out. Listen to the psalm as you pray it this Sunday. The Lord gave them, and gives us also, Bread from Heaven.

This Sundays, we will hear Jesus teachings on the Bread of Heaven. Today in the Gospel, Jesus tells them that His Father gives us the true Bread of Heaven. When the people ask him to give them this bread Jesus tells them that He is the true Bread of Heaven that gives life to the world. They end up walking away and rejecting this teaching, just as a vast multitude of former Catholics are doing today in Country after Country: they don’t realize it is the miraculous Bread from Heaven : Jesus truly present body, blood, soul and divinity in the Holy Eucharist..

There are still those who have walked away because it is too hard to believe, but it is the central, most holy Sacrament of our Catholic Faith. It is the constant teaching of the Roman and Eastern Orthodox Churches, that Jesus is really and truly present under the appearance of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist. High Church Anglicans also believe this doctrine. Only men ordained by the laying on of hands in an unbroken line from the Apostles, priests of the New Testament, can change the bread and wine into Jesus Body and Blood. For those who wish to enter the Kingdom, Jesus is still the one true….. Miracle Bread from Heaven

A little child in second grader had no problem with this teaching. She was only eight and asked me, “Do you know why this bread doesn’t look like God?” She then answered her own question. “Because if it did, we would be too scared to go to Holy Communion but nobody is scared of bread and that is why Jesus comes looking like bread. He doesn’t want to scare us.” No wonder Jesus says unless we become like a little children. Adults find it more difficult to let God be God.

Jesus tells us also:

“Unless you eat my Body and drink my Blood you cannot have my life”.

John 6:53