It’s the nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time and today’s gospel is what people would say is part two of last Sunday’s gospel of the same title. That gospel story was actually a continuation of the previous Sunday Gospel story about the feeding of the five thousand. Today’s gospel story comes from John 6:42-51.
“41 At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?” 43 “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. 44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.
“45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’[a] Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life.
“49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
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The past three Sundays, the gospel narrative is about the Bread of Life discourse from the gospel of John the Evangelist who explains about what Jesus meant when he speaks about himself as the Bread of Life. While the Israelites were roaming around in the Jordanian desert for 40 or so years, there were times when they ended up having no food and God would bring down manna from heaven for them. Manna was similar to bread, and it’s white. Now isn’t white the color of the Holy Eucharist?
Yes, the Bread of Life discourse is about Jesus Christ teaching us about the importance of the Holy Eucharist in our daily lives. In today’s gospel our Lord told his disciples: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.” This is a very important statement that Catholics must learn to completely understand.
First of all, in Jeremiah 1:5 it says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” This prophetic message from Jeremiah tells us God participates in our creation. At the hour of our birth God gives us our souls. So when Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.” This really gives meaning to what the whole message is all about, that the God who created us, even without our permission, wants to save us from our sins.
So the idea of saving our souls and ourselves doesn’t really depend on the God who created us because of what Jesus told us in today’s gospel that “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.” So the God who created us can only do much, but the saving of our sinful souls truly depends on how we respond to the saving grace of God.
It is unfortunate that life these days depends upon so many issues that prevent us from communing with God. There are people who visit the Blessed Sacrament merely to ask God for something rather than offer their services to the Lord. Others are in a worse state in the sense that they become rich as if they became rich because of themselves, not realizing that God gave them those riches. So it is time for us to refocus our ways and gain spiritual mileage with God so we can reunite with him on the day of our entry to life eternal.
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For email responses to this article, write to vsbobita@gmail.com. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.