Take and Eat
Sometimes we feel like Elijah in today’s First Reading. We want to lie down and die, keenly aware of our failures, that we seem to be getting no better at doing what God wants of us.
We can be tempted to despair, as the prophet was on his forty-day journey in the desert. We can be tempted to “murmur” against God, as the Israelites did during their forty years in the desert (see Exodus 16:2,7,8; 1 Corinthians 10:10).
The Gospel today uses the same word, “murmur,” to describe the crowds, who reenact Israel’s hardheartedness in the desert.
Jesus tells them that prophecies are being fulfilled in Him, that they are being taught by God. But they can’t believe it. They can only see His flesh, that He is the “son” of Joseph and Mary.
Yet if we believe, if we seek Him in our distress, He will deliver us from our fears, as we sing in today’s Psalm.
At the altar in every Eucharist, the angel of the Lord, the Lord himself (see Exodus 3:1-2), touches us. He commands us to take and eat His flesh given for the life of the world (see Matthew 26:26).
This taste of the heavenly gift (see Hebrews 6:4-5) comes to us with a renewed command —to get up and continue on the journey we began in baptism, to the mountain of God, the kingdom of heaven.
He will give us the bread of life, the strength and grace we need—as He fed our spiritual ancestors in the wilderness and Elijah in the desert.
So let us stop grieving the Spirit of God, as Paul says in today’s Epistle, in another reference to Israel in the desert (see Isaiah 63:10).
Let us say to God as Elijah did, “Take my life.” Not in the sense of wanting to die. But in giving ourselves as a sacrificial offering—loving Him as He has loved us, on the cross and in the Eucharist.
Saint Cyril of Alexandria
Commentary on St. Luke’s Gospel, 22
How could man, who remained riveted to the earth and subject to death, gain entry to immortality once more? His flesh had to become assimilated to the life-giving force in God. Now, God the Father’s life-giving force is his Word, his only Son, and so it was he whom God sent to us as Savior and Redeemer…
If you put a breadcrumb into oil, water or wine, it at once soaks up their properties. If you place iron into contact with fire, it will shortly become full of its energy and, even though by nature it is only iron, will take on the appearance of fire. In the same way, then, God’s life-giving Word, by uniting himself to the flesh he assumed, caused it to become life giving.
Did he not say: “Whoever believes in me has eternal life. I am the bread of life.” And again: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh… Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” So then, by eating the flesh of Christ, the Savior of us all, and drinking his blood we have life in ourselves, we become one with him, we remain in him and he in us.
Therefore it is for him to enter within us in a way fitting to God, by the Holy Spirit, and to mingle with our body, after a fashion, through the holy flesh and precious blood we receive as life-giving blessing as if in bread and wine. Indeed…, God has exercised his condescension towards our weakness and placed all his life-force into the elements of bread and wine, which are thus endowed with the spirit of his own life. So don’t hesitate to believe in it for our Lord himself has clearly said: “This is my body” and “This is my blood.”
Pope Benedict XVI
Angelus Address, Sunday, August 12, 2012
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Reading of the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel in the Liturgy of these Sundays has led us to reflect on the multiplication of the loaves, with which the Lord satisfied the hunger of a crowd of five thousand, and on the invitation Jesus addresses to all those whom he had feed to busy themselves seeking a food that endures to eternal life. Jesus wants to help them understand the profound meaning of the miracle he had worked: in miraculously satisfying their physical hunger; he prepares them to receive the news that he is the Bread which has come down from heaven (cf. Jn 6:41), which will satisfy hunger for ever. The Jewish people too, during their long journey through the desert, experienced bread which came down from heaven, manna, which kept them alive until they reached the Promised Land. Jesus now speaks of himself as the true Bread come down from heaven, which is capable of keeping people alive not for a moment or on a stretch of a journey but for ever. He is the food that gives eternal life, because he is the Only-Begotten Son of God who is in the Father’s heart, who came to give man life in fullness, to introduce man into the very life of God.
In Jewish thought it was clear that the true bread of heaven, which nourished Israel, was the Law, the word of God. The People of Israel clearly recognized that the Torah, which was Moses’ fundamental and lasting gift, was the basic element that distinguished them from other peoples and consisted in their knowledge of God’s will, thus the right way of life. Now Jesus, in manifesting himself as the bread of heaven, witnesses that he himself is the Word of God in Person, the Incarnate Word, through whom man can make the will of God his food (cf. Jn 4:34), which guides and sustains his existence.
Therefore to doubt in the divinity of Jesus, as do the Jews in today’s Gospel passage, means setting oneself against God’s work. Indeed, they say: he is the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know! (cf. Jn 6:42). They do not go beyond his earthly origins, and for this reason refuse to accept him as the Word of God made flesh. St Augustine, in his Commentary on John’s Gospel explains it in the following way: “These Jews were far from the bread of heaven, and knew not how to hunger after it. They had the jaws of their heart languid… This bread, indeed, requires the hunger of the inner man” (26, 1).
And we must ask ourselves if we really feel this hunger, the hunger for the Word of God, the hunger to know life’s true meaning. Only those who are drawn by God the Father, who listen to him and let themselves be instructed by him can believe in Jesus, meet him and nourish themselves with him and thereby find true life, the road of life, justice, truth and love. St Augustine adds: “the Lord…. said that he himself was the Bread that came down from heaven, exhorting us to believe in him. For to believe in him is to eat the living bread. He that believes eats; he is sated invisibly, because invisibly he is born again” to a deeper and truer life. He is reborn from within, from his intimate self he is made new (ibid.).
Invoking Mary Most Holy, let us ask her to guide us to the encounter with Jesus so that our friendship with him may be more and more intense; let us ask her to usher us into full communion of love with her Son, the living Bread come down from heaven, so as to be renewed by him in the depths of our being.
After the Angelus:
Dear brothers and sisters, my thoughts go at this moment to the peoples of Asia, in particular of the Philippines and of the Peoples’ Republic of China, harshly struck by violent rains, and likewise those of North-West Iran, hit by a violent earthquake. These events have taken a heavy toll of victims and injured people, causing thousands of evacuees and immense damage. I ask you to join in my prayers for those who have lost their life and for all the people tried by such devastation. May these brethren of ours not lack our solidarity and support.
I am pleased to greet the English-speaking pilgrims gathered for this Angelus prayer. The Readings from today’s Mass invite us to put our faith in Jesus, the “bread of life” who offers himself to us in the Eucharist and promises us the joy of the resurrection. During these summer holidays, may you and your families respond to the Lord’s invitation by actively participating in the Eucharistic sacrifice and by generous acts of charity. Upon all of you I invoke his blessings of joy and peace!
I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week. A good Sunday to you all. Thank you for coming!
Pope Benedict XVI
Angelus Address, Sunday, August 16, 2009
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Yesterday we celebrated the great Feast of Mary taken up into Heaven, and today we read these words of Jesus in the Gospel: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven” (Jn 6: 51).
One cannot but be struck by this parallel that rotates around the symbol of “Heaven”: Mary was “taken up” to the very place from which her Son had “come down”. Of course, this language, which is biblical, expresses in figurative terms something that never completely coincides with the world of our own concepts and images. But let us pause for a moment to think! Jesus presents himself as the “living bread”, that is, the food which contains the life of God itself which it can communicate to those who eat it, the true nourishment that gives life, which is really and deeply nourishing. Jesus says: “if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh” (Jn 6: 51). Well, from whom did the Son of God take his “flesh”, his actual, earthly humanity? He took it from the Virgin Mary. In order to enter our mortal condition, God took from her a human body. In turn, at the end of her earthly life, the Virgin’s body was taken up into Heaven by God and brought to enter the heavenly condition. It is a sort of exchange in which God always takes the full initiative but, in a certain sense, as we have seen on other occasions, he also needs Mary, her “yes” as a creature, her very flesh, her actual existence, in order to prepare the matter for his sacrifice: the Body and the Blood, to offer them on the Cross as a means of eternal life and, in the sacrament of the Eucharist, as spiritual food and drink.
Dear brothers and sisters, what happened in Mary also applies in ways that are different yet real to every man and to every woman because God asks each one of us to welcome him, to put at his disposal our heart and our body, our entire existence, our flesh the Bible says so that he may dwell in the world. He calls us to be united with him in the sacrament of the Eucharist, Bread broken for the life of the world, to form together the Church, his Body in history. And if we say “yes”, like Mary, indeed to the extent of our “yes”, this mysterious exchange is also brought about for us and in us. We are taken up into the divinity of the One who took on our humanity. The Eucharist is the means, the instrument of this reciprocal transformation which always has God as its goal, and as the main actor. He is the Head and we are the limbs, he is the Vine and we the branches. Whoever eats of this Bread and lives in communion with Jesus, letting himself be transformed by him and in him, is saved from eternal death: naturally he dies like everyone and also shares in the mystery of Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion, but he is no longer a slave to death and will rise on the Last Day to enjoy the eternal celebration together with Mary and with all the Saints.
This mystery, this celebration of God, begins here below: it is the mystery of faith, hope and love that is celebrated in life and in the liturgy, especially that of the Eucharist, and is expressed in fraternal communion and in service for our neighbour. Let us pray the Blessed Virgin to help us always to nourish ourselves faithfully with the Bread of eternal life, so that, already on this earth, we may experience the joy of Heaven.
After the Angelus:
I greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present at today’s Angelus. May your time here at Castel Gandolfo and in Rome deepen your faith in Our Lord, the living Bread, who brings us the gift of eternal life. Upon you and your families I invoke Almighty God’s abundant Blessings of joy and peace!
I wish you all a good Sunday.
