Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

Sunday, August 2, 2015

What do you hunger for? What do you thirst for?

We, as a people, are a lot like the Israelites in Egypt.  We have become slaves to our own culture.  We want everything on our own terms.  Our homes have become bigger and better, our cars more luxurious, our parties more elaborate.  Life is now one big quest for the next new thing.  Think about it for a second. How many people here grew up in a house that was half as big as the one they are now living in?  How many of us shared a bedroom with siblings versus each having their own room?  Our desires, our expectations have changed. We, as a society, have changed our expectations of God.  We can have our beliefs, and worship our God, as long as we keep it to ourselves.  We can practice our faith, as long as we do it behind closed doors.

We heard, in today’s first reading about the Israelite community, wandering through the desert, and grumbling against Moses and Aaron.  We know that they were hungry, and complaining that it would have been better for them to have died in Egypt because, although they were slaves, they at least had their fill of food.  So God rained down manna, miraculous bread from heaven, which they could gather up each morning and eat their fill of each day.

In our Gospel reading, taken from St. John’s sixth chapter, we see the people following the Lord, looking for the next big thing. Shortly before, a multitude of people had been fed miraculously with nothing more than a few dried fish and a handful of loaves of bread. Jesus tells them not to work for food that perishes, but “for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.”  He said  “the work of God (is) that you believe in the one he sent.” Not grasping the importance of what had just happened, they ask the Lord, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?”  Jesus, in the end, tells them “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Let’s return to my two initial questions.  What do you hunger for? What do you thirst for?  Do we hunger for manna? The Book of Exodus, after our first reading, goes on to say that the Israelites were only allowed to gather enough manna for one days worth of food. They were not allowed to gather a surplus. In other words, they had to rely on the Lord for their sustenance.  They couldn’t store away treasure for a rainy day.  They couldn’t collect more then they needed.  What do I hunger for, a larger home, a faster car, a bigger television?  What do you thirst for? Do you thirst for recognition?  Do you thirst for adulation, worldly things?

Do you hunger for the faith, for social justice, for peace?  Do you hunger for greater respect of life? Do you hunger for the Truth?

This is the real beauty of what Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel passage.  If we seek to do the will of God, if we learn our faith, and grow our faith, and cherish our faith, we will never hunger, we will never thirst, because we have, in the end, the only thing that matters, our Lord.  We can come to this holy place, we can experience a part of Heaven on earth. We can receive the very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus, we can nourish our bodies with his flesh and blood.  We can learn about the treasure of Eucharistic Adoration.  We can spend time with the Lord, we can pour our hearts to him, we can heap our burdens upon his shoulders. We can ask him our burning questions, we can contemplate his quietly whispered answers.

Let us hunger for the Bread of Life, which gives life to the world, for if we truly hunger for the will of God, and nourish ourselves with him, we will truly receive all that we need.