Sunday, August 2, 2009AD
Eighteenth Sunday in Greentime
Pass the Bread…
For the next several Sundays, our regular recitation of St Mark’s Gospel is interrupted by an interlude from the sixth chapter of St John’s Gospel. The chapter is known as the Sermon on the Bread of Life. Catholics automatically think of the chapter as primarily a meditation of the Eucharist as the Bread of Life. It is that, in part, at the very conclusion of the sermon (which verses, we hear in a few Sunday’s time).
The intro to the sermon at large is the concluding line of today’s Gospel. Jesus says, “I am the Bread of Life, whoever comes to Me will never hunger, whoever believes in Me will never thirst.”
The language which Jesus spoke was Aramaic, a cognate of Hebrew. The word for “bread” in the original would have been lehem. The name of the town of Jesus’ birth was Beth-lehem, viz., House of Bread.
However, Hebrew and Aramaic were very concrete, visual languages in the days of Jesus. As a result, a word might have multiple meanings. Such was the case for the word that Jesus used in the original. Lehem can also mean other things. It can mean food, in general. It can mean sustenance, whatever keeps us going. It also can mean simply money, the means that we use to purchase our bread, our food, our sustenance.
In colloquial English today, we have the adage that “bread is the staff of life”. It is understood as the basic sustenance of one’s diet. (One would not relish a diet of bread and water. However, when we are sick, frequently our diet becomes “toast and tea”, basic mainstays that nourish and hydrate us.
Later on, in the sermon, in John 6.51-58 (which we hear as our Sunday Gospel on August 16, in a fortnight), Jesus is, indeed, focusing on the His Real Presence in the Eucharist. However, the wider meaning of lehem is operative this week and next in our Gospel proclamation. Jesus is for those who believe (in) Him their bread, their food, their sustenance in a variety of ways. He sustains us in the Words that He proclaims to us; He sustains us in the sacraments (including, especially, the Eucharist); He sustains us in our relationship with Him as the Head of the (Mystical) Body of Christ, of Which each and every one of us is a cell, containing His DNA (the Holy Spirit!); He sustains us in prayer, whether verbal or non-verbal, individual or liturgical; He sustains us in the silence of our minds and hearts in ways that we do not even perceive. (The great transcendent pray-ers of our Christian tradition have averred that Christ Jesus is present in the silence and solitude and slowing down of the Christian. Many theologians of the last century, including the great Karl Rahner, as well as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (aka Pope Benedict XVI) have stated time and time again that the individual human has built into his or her humanity the call of the Transcendent. Sadly, our culture and its hawkers have played down such a “holy longing” by pandering to our appeal for things that we can possess and have, rather than the response in Holy Awe (the Fear of the Lord) that Catholics consistently misunderstand (possibly because we fear what this Holy Awe will uncover and reveal to us about ourselves.)
Theologians have commented that many have troubles with the term “Bread of Life”. Ironically, the trouble is not with the meaning of the word “bread” once it is clarified. Rather, the trouble arises over what do we really mean by the word “life”. If we seriously come to Jesus in the many ways in which He offers Himself to us, we won’t be hungry or thirsty. More important, He will help to clarify what life is really all about. He teaches us to live the Paschal Mystery (of ascent, descent and transformation) in Him, with Him and through Him. (You are already, even if you don’t know it!) He teaches us to believe in God (His God) and in Him the One whom God sent. He teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves (more than a slogan for a card carrying member of the Jesus Movement). He practices what He preaches by a life of outpouring service and sacrifice for His own. That’s us, even now. How do we respond to His offer to be our Bread of Life, if we allow Him to make it? 080209AD jfq
