Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15; Ephesians 17:20-24; John 6:24-35
I am going to cheat today. I will get to the Gospel, the Bread of Life discourse, eventually, but first I want to head off at a tangent.
Today is the forty fifth anniversary of my first Mass. Actually, what we refer to as a priest’s first Mass is really his second, as he is ordained early enough to concelebrate the ordination Mass—but we won’t split hairs. I had invited my former university chaplain to preach, and he had worked out that today’s Second Reading had been the Epistle, almost eight years before, when I attended Sunday Mass for the first time at Fisher House, the chaplaincy, in the days before the Lectionary had been revised, and the new Lectionary introduced.
He had realised this because of one phrase, namely “a spiritual revolution”. It resonated because that earlier Mass had been celebrated in the autumn of 1968, the year of student revolution throughout Europe, and also in the United States, where protests against the Vietnam War were violently suppressed. “Revolution” was a key word in the student vocabulary, and the visiting preacher on that 1968 Sunday had taken “a spiritual revolution” as his theme.
Does that phrase still resonate today? It probably should, as we are constantly called, both as individuals and as the Church, to be turned upside down by the power of the Holy Spirit. We may feel that we have had our spiritual revolution, that we have answered our vocation, and that we are now entitled to sail peacefully along, resting on our supposed achievements; yet, deep down, we know that this isn’t sufficient.
God’s call is new every day. As God’s people, we are not entitled to take our ease, to settle for the comfortable life. Every day, we must allow the Spirit to disturb us, to shake us out of complacency, to lead us further and more deeply along our pilgrim way. Pope Francis has spent the last eight years doing that for the Church, and we must be prepared to have the same thing happen daily within ourselves.
In this respect, we do find a link with today’s First Reading and Gospel. The people of Israel are our predecessors, on a journey to the Promised Land. Like us, they are called to a spiritual revolution, to have their relationship with God constantly renewed; and, like us, they are reluctant and prone to grumble—and don’t forget that grumbling is one of the most destructive of activities.
It is in response to their grumbling that God gives them the manna, this mysterious “bread from heaven” which will sustain them along the pilgrim way, and which is the forerunner of the true bread from heaven, Christ the Lord, who sustains us by the gift of Himself, principally under the appearances of bread and wine in the Eucharist.
Jesus has already shown Himself to be the fulfilment of the prophets, multiplying loaves like Elisha, and as the new Moses, ascending the mountain and, later, crossing the waters of the lake, as Moses led the people through the sea. Now, He effectively announces Himself as God, the giver of bread, as He claims “I am the Bread of Life”, one of the “I am” sayings with which He identifies Himself with the God of the burning bush, who declared Himself to Moses as “I am, who am”, the One who is pure existence.
Over the next weeks, we shall encounter the development of the Bread of Life theme, but today there is one more crucial point to notice. Jesus doesn’t yet refer to eating and drinking: He speaks first of “coming” and “believing”. “Those who come to me will never be hungry. Those who believe in me will never thirst.” Our reception of the Bread of Life will be of no benefit unless we come with our whole heart, mind, and soul to Him, and believe in Him—unless we constantly undergo our spiritual revolution.
