I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE

Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 26, 2015

Saints Peter and Paul Parish, Tucson, AZ

"Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." (John 6:35)

In today's Gospel Reading (John 6:1-15), Jesus fed 5,000 people with five barley loaves and two fish.

He had the apostles gather the leftovers, which filled 12 wicker baskets.  This feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle which is present in all four Gospels, so it is a significant event. 


A huge crowd was following Jesus after He went across the Sea of Galilee because they had seen and heard of His healings and His miracles. So they were attracted to Him, literally captivated by Him.

The Jewish Feast of Passover was near, so we know that Our Lord’s ministry is soon coming to an end and that He would be taken away to be crucified. 

Jesus and His disciples climbed to the top of the mountain and saw an immense crowd climbing up towards them. Our Lord knows the crowd is hungry, so He performs takes pity on them. 

Now, if we want to truly understand the significance of today’s event in the Gospel, we must first understand that it was truly a miracle. 

In fact, over the past several years there have been false theologians, who say that the multiplication of the loaves and fish was not a miracle. They say the real miracle was not the multiplication of loaves, but the act of caring. The people had plenty of food with them hidden under their coats and Jesus taught them to share. So they all pulled out their surplus of food from under their robes and everyone shared with his neighbor. 

That is the lesson, they say. Jesus did not do a physical miracle; the real miracle was convincing people to share with others.

Fr. John Paul Shea 

My brothers and sisters, what took place in today’s Gospel was a Divine miracle! This is the real lesson that we are to understand in today’s Gospel—that it was a supernatural event. 

In fact, Jesus performed miracles  to show that the Kingdom of God has come into our midst. The people in today’s Gospel understood this. This is why “when the people saw the sign [Our Lord] had done, they said, 'This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.'”

Our Lord Jesus Christ is truly the Prophet! He is the one who has come into our world to lead us into heaven! And He has given us His Church as His Mystical Body until He comes again. 

Our Lord wants us to do acts of generosity. He wants us to feed the poor and visit the sick. But acts of charity are not the primary focus of our Church. The primary goal of our Church is to lead souls to heaven.
Our Church is not a human institution. It is a heavenly institution. We come to Church to experience God! We come into His presence so that we can be fed with the food of heaven in the Holy Eucharist, and then we go out and do acts of mercy.

In fact, the miraculous feeding of the 5000 people is a foreshadowing of the miraculous feeding of the Holy Eucharist, which we will hear about  at Mass next week. The Gospel of John states that the next day after this miracle  that Jesus and His disciples had crossed to the other side of the sea. The crowd of people noticed that Jesus was gone, so they go looking for Him. 

When the crowd comes toward Jesus after crossing the sea, Jesus tells them yes, you are looking for me because you ate the loaves and were filled. But, “do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which [I] will give you (John 6:27). Jesus further says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. And the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world (John 6:51). 

The miracle of the loaves and fish find its fulfillment in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the living Bread! He has come down from heaven, and He feeds us with Himself so that we may have eternal life. 

In the beginning of this homily I related how over the past several years that many false theologians have tried to say that the multiplication of the loaves and fish was not a miracle.

This sort of thinking has become the mentality of many Catholics today. Science and technology coupled with our secular, relativistic culture has darkened the minds to many to the supernatural reality of our Church. In fact, since the 1960s many Churches have taken the tabernacle from behind the altar and put it off to the side.

Many modern Churches have been built to look more like a social hall or movie theater instead of a reflection of the heavenly Jerusalem. And many Catholics have lost awareness of the TRUE PRESENCE of our Lord in the Eucharist which is the ultimate miracle God has provided. 
 
Many today look at our Church as if it is a sort of political party or social club. We hear the terms so often today of liberal and conservative Catholics. Yet, when it comes to the teachings of our Church, there is no such thing as left or right Catholics. 

This sort of thinking is an earthly mentality. We either want to follow the teachings of our Church or we don’t! And if we don’t want to follow the teachings handed down to us by the apostles through the Catholic Church, including the moral teachings, then there are hundreds of other Churches we can join which will cater to our own earthly desires. 

Of course, these Churches, or what we would call "ecclesial communities," do not have the real Bread from Heaven because they have broken away from the Church instituted by Jesus Christ. 

My brothers and sisters, today’s Gospel passage of the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish calls us not to focus on what is here below but on what is above! This is why we come to Mass! The crowd in today’s Gospel followed Our Lord because they had filled their bellies and witnessed miracles. We come to our Lord in faith. 

And when we come to Him in faith, it is then that Our Lord provides for us not simply with earthly food, but with heavenly food—the gift of eternal life. Let us come to Him in humility. For He alone will satisfy our needs.

Did you enjoy this homily? There are more. 
Please read: How Desperate Are We for God?

After Confession: The Gift

By Christopher Ziegler
Poet Christopher Ziegler can be found @CZWriting on Twitter

My mind had fallen

In a muddy rut of sin.

I did not know

How it had happened,

Or where I had tripped the snare

That snagged me.

I was lost.

Delusions and temptations

Were closing in all around

While grace seemed to be slipping

Further, further away.

So I went to confession

And spilled my lapses without guile.

At once I felt a weight was lifted.

The clouds cleared my mind

And I beheld the start of my rut.

I remembered the precise thought

That had swapped God’s will

With my own judgement.

The very thing I chastise others for doing,

I myself had done—

I had indulged the pride of life.

As if to mock God,

My foe had tricked me into hypocrisy.

I am too easily deceived

By that foul cunning.

I must keep my heart meek

At all times and in all questions.

The instant I raise my heart on high,

Gentleness and patience vanish

And I fall prey to my weakness.

God knows best, and I—nothing.

But He gives forgiveness,

And, in confession,

The gift of knowledge.

Would you like to read more about the Sacrament of Confession? Twilight's Confession

Original Justice: Marriage Between One Man and One Woman

by Lawrence Fox

Editor’s Note: This is the sequel to Genderless “Marriage” Threatens the Foundation of Civilization  in which Lawrence wrote,  “The fruitful bonding between man and woman is the most fundamental form of original justice.”

Commentator Mark Hoffman accused Lawrence of not knowing the definition of “justice,” which he defined as

"the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments." Now we see what Mark was missing.

It was a common practice for ancient rulers to form images of themselves and place them within temples throughout their kingdom. Perhaps they wished to be worshiped. Maybe they just wanted to be honored.

But God – from a completely different motive -- did likewise. He placed within the temple of His creation His own image, that of man – male and female. Then He breathed on them, and blessed them with the Gift of His Holy Spirit.

Adam and Eve were God’s ambassadors within creation. We know from the writings of St. Paul, especially the Letter to the Colossians, that Jesus is the perfect Image (icon) of God since in Him dwelt the fullness (pleroma) of Divinity. Pleroma was a Greek word used by philosophers to identify the overabundance of divinity, which emanates from the One, the source of all life.

It seems several of the early Church Fathers considered that God planned that Adam and Eve be made in the image of God’s Son, the incarnated Jesus Christ, “who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

Male and Female He made them in His Image 

Now that is something to contemplate. With the creation of Adam and Eve, God saw all that He made and it was very good. In essence, material creation was complete, there was no evil, and God rested on the Sabbath.

The Book of Genesis states that Adam and Eve were made in God’s likeness.  St. John in his 1^st Letter states “We are already children of God but what we shall be has not yet been revealed but we know that we shall be like Him (Jesus) when He comes for we shall see Him as He is.”  To see the Face of God, one must be like Him.  

Adam and Eve as such were without sin and full of the Life of God, and therefore in God’s likeness.  Blessed with the supernatural gift of holiness, they were able to walk and talk with God in the Garden.  From the beginning, they were in communion with God and participated in God’s Divine Nature. This sanctifying grace was a free gift from God, Who could have made Adam and Eve naturally whole with nothing more.

But God created Adam and Eve among all the creatures for Himself, so that they would know, love and serve Him in this life and be happy with Him in eternity.  Adam and Eve came from God and their destiny was to return to God.

God brought all the animals to Adam to see what he would name them and whatever he named them they were so named. Man -- Adam and Eve – was given other preternatural gifts such as infused wisdom which means they knew the purpose of things. By naming the animals, the original male and female knew and identified their purpose and their universal substance. Today, man has completely lost the concept of the purpose of things. 

Both Adam and Eve freely walked  naked in the Garden, but they were not ashamed. They possessed in their being and manifested in their state of marriage God’s original justice within Creation. They were in harmony with God, with themselves, with each other, and with creation. Perhaps this is where modernists would say God does not create junk.

Adam and Eve’s original justice was to be lived within God’s command and blessing, “Be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth.” Adam said, “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I shall call her woman for she came forth from the side of man." And Jesus added, "And for this reason a man shall leave father and mother and cling to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.”

God commanded Adam and Eve to till the Garden. He said that they could eat of all the fruits of the Garden except for one. They were not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God so warned them that on the day they did eat of that tree, they would die. 

Adam and Eve possessed immortality. They were not created for death or illness or ignorance. Adam and Eve were to be parents and teachers of the human race.

The serpent identified by Jesus as “a murderer and liar from the beginning” convinced Adam and Eve to put their

"You shall be like god."

hands to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He caused them to doubt God’s goodness and lied: “You shall be like god knowing good and evil.”

(Note: It was U.S. President Barack Obama who stood before the graduates at Notre Dame University in 2009, and said, “Faith must entertain a healthy degree of doubt in order to overcome fanaticism.”  It was a serpentine statement on the same level as the lie in the Garden.  We can conclude based upon the sage advice of Obama that Jesus was a fanatic, so was Paul and Peter, since they went to their deaths possessing unwavering certainty. In the meantime, Obama believes the fanatic Islamic State (ISIS) is not an expression of Islam.)

Adam and Eve were in God’s image, but placing their hand to the tree, they chose to “know good and evil apart from God’s Divine Revelation.”

Ex-Liberal Christopher Ziegler makes the same point in Obergefell v Hodges: The New Tower of Babel  with respect to Same Sex “Marriage.”

“Man wants to seize the fruit and forsake the source, to 'worship the creature more than the Creator' (Romans 1:25),” Ziegler wrote. “He (modern man) will take the fruits of the tree, those things which are delectable to the eye, and reject the root and branch, which is God.”

This rejection of Divine Revelation continues to be a major cause of sin in the world. They saw that the fruit was delightful to the eyes, good for food, and profitable for wisdom and so they ate it and suddenly discovered they were naked. Adam and Eve lost their original justice, their likeness of God,  and experienced the condition known as concupiscence. They hid from God.  They hid from each other, sewing fig leaves to cover themselves since they could not control their passions.

Eve blamed the serpent for her actions, and Adam blamed God and Eve. As such, they were no longer in harmony with God, neither with each other nor with creation. God clothed them by killing an animal and covered them with animal skin. This foreshadowed the Old Testament rule, “There was no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood.”

But animal blood could not make a person holy. God promised them a Redeemer who would put enmity between the woman and her seed and the serpent and serpent’s seed.  (Gen. 3:15) Adam and Eve handed down the loss of God’s likeness as original sin to all generations. Hence we cannot assume that because God did not make junk that he made us with sinful inclinations. Those came from our first parents.

Original sin simply means the absence of the good (sanctifying grace), which should have been there and passed on from parent to child. Man and woman had to wait for the Messiah to come. In Him, they would become “born again” in sanctifying grace.

  

Jesus was sent by God to redeem mankind from the slavery of sin and to restore God’s likeness within humanity. Jesus emptied himself and became man. He was obedient -- even unto death on the Cross. All that was lost by Adam and Eve’s disobedience was restored by Jesus’ perfect obedience. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, the baptized become God’s adopted children in Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit, washed with the Blood of the Lamb, and sealed by the Holy Spirit for eternal resurrected life.

On Holy Thursday, Jesus instituted God’s New Covenant of Love by first bathing his disciples’ feet and then celebrating the New and Everlasting Covenant in His Body and Blood.

The Temple sacrifices were coming to an end. God now gave to His people the Eucharistic Celebration by which humanity returns in justice a holy and perfect sacrifice to the Father in thanksgiving for the goodness of His Creation and Redemption in Christ Jesus.

The knot of sin was untied. Adam and Eve in the Garden decided, “Not God’s will but our will be done.”

garden, a point of decision 

Jesus in the Garden decided, “Not my will but God’s will be done.”

Jesus’ death on the cross reconciles humanity with God, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” Jesus’ death on the cross brings rest, “It is finished.” In Christ Jesus, humanity is able to return to the Garden (the Kingdom of God, the Church) victorious over sin and death. Jesus said, “Where I am so you shall be.” Jesus is the heart of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.

Jesus’ death on the cross brings about the grace of renewal, “From His side flowed blood and water.” Jesus -- by his sleep in the tomb --renews the Sabbath day rest of the First Creation. Jesus goes into hell (the place of the dead) and leads the saints of the Old Testament into heaven including Adam and Eve. Jesus’ rising on the 8^th Day manifests God’s Eternal Rest and New Creation, bringing forth complete victory over sin and death.

As a result of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, the baptized are drawn back into an original justice with God, with themselves, each other, and with creation.  The moral law is now lived in and through the power of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Man, who comes from God, is now able to return to God in Jesus Christ, who ascended to the Father, “to my God and your God, to my Father and your Father.”

The Church is the Bride of Christ. God maintains – even in Redemption --- the image of the fruitful bonding between one man and one woman – as the most fundamental form of original justice.

Like this piece? Perhaps you'd like to read Lawrence's poem Tasks at Hand: A Poem about the Delights of Faithful Marriage

or Living Stones Built into a Spiritual House: the Communion of Saints