TAUGHT BY GOD TO LIVE SPIRITUAL LIFE

SUNDAY, NINETEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

1 Kings 19:4-8; Ps 34:2-9; Eph 4:30-5:2; Jn 6:41-51

Taught by God to live and love

The reading of this Sunday continues the trajectory of the two Sundays ago. The subject is the word of God and its necessity for our spiritual life. The three readings point in the same direction, showing different reasons why we must eat of God to live a spiritual life. The first reading narrates the experience of the prophet Elijah on his way to Horeb, the mountain of God. The problems he encountered in his vocation as the prophet of God prompted his desire and journey to see God. After the defeat and killing of the prophets of Baal, Jezebel was after his life. Hence, he sought the face of God for strength and direction in his vocation. His pain and confusion are evident in the complaint he made to God. “‘O Lord’, he said ‘I have had enough. Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down and went to sleep. But an angel touched him and said, ‘Get up and eat.’” The angel brought him a scone baked on a hot stone and a jar of water. He ate and drank two times before embarking on his forty-day and forty-night walk to Horeb. The food he ate was certainly not an ordinary food that carried him for forty days and nights. The food is a sort of sacrament of spiritual nourishment, which also strengthened his body to do a forty-day and forty-night walk. By this, we understand that God’s providential care covers our physical and spiritual needs. The physical benefits offer a pathway leading to contemplation of God’s goodness.  

The full sacramental realisation of this divine providence is in the Gospel. The discourse our Lord started with the Jews last week Sunday continues in today’s passage. Jesus Christ presents himself as the Bread of Life that comes from heaven for our spiritual and physical nourishment. He first fed them five barley loaves and two fish to introduce them to spiritual nourishment, which is of utmost importance. The physical and spiritual nourishment is not separated but given together. But there is a necessary knowledge of God that must come before we can derive the needed spiritual nourishment from the physical nourishment we can see, touch, and taste. Elijah already had the faith and knowledge of God to derive spiritual nourishment from the physical scone and water served him by an angel. The crowd our Lord fed with bread and fish had not the prerequisite faith and knowledge to derive the spiritual nourishment from what they have received. Thus, he longed to teach them about the spiritual reality behind physical nourishment. He explained the being of the Eternal Word to them as the origin of the bread they had, and their ancestors ate before them. Their lack of faith prevented them from understanding him, thereby making their way to God. “‘Surely this is Jesus son of Joseph’ they said. ‘We know his father and mother. How can he now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’ Their lack of faith removed God from the equation, which makes it impossible to reach the spiritual reality.

For us to reach the spiritual reality in the physical nourishment provided for us by God, we must have faith in the word of God. Failure to receive the gift of faith from God the Father makes it impossible to receive spiritual nourishment by seeing God in what we receive. “No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me, and I will raise him at the last day.” With faith, we can reach the spiritual reality, the word of God that provides for our nourishment and well-being. To believe in God is to hold the word of God in reverence and worship. The word of God is the bread or food of our spirit. To receive, eat, and drink of him is to live a spiritual life. “I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” Here, our Lord presents what we can sense and feel but refers to the spiritual reality we cannot see but must believe to have a spiritual life. The physical food nourishes bodily life, while the spiritual reality they represent nourishes spiritual life. He is the spiritual reality represented by his body and blood.

The second reading tells us of the effect of the spiritual food. By believing and eating the spiritual food, we receive a spiritual life nourished by spiritual food which is the word of God. The word makes us to be like God and share his life. St. Paul writes of these benefits. “Try, then, to imitate God as children of his that he loves and follow Christ loving as he loved you, giving himself up in our place as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” The purpose of spiritual food is to enable us to grow in our participation in the life of God. Since the Holy Spirit is the principle or source of the spiritual life, we must do everything according to his bidding. By remaining with the Holy Spirit in all things, we continue to deepen our communion with God. He reveals how the physically given connects to the unseen God. This is what eating spiritual food means: understanding everything with the word of God. This is how to live and never taste death.

Let us pray:  Almighty ever-living God, whom, taught by the Holy Spirit, we dare to call our Father, bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters, that we may merit to enter into the inheritance which you have promised.