The Bread of Angels is made the Food of Earthly Pilgrims

The readings for this 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time continue the theme of the Eucharist. We continue our reading of Our Lord’s Bread of Life discourse in the 6th chapter of John’s Gospel. Last week, we considered Jesus’ invitation to the Jews to eat the bread of eternal life – himself. This Sunday, he explains how those who listen to God will inevitably encounter him in the Eucharistic sacrifice.

The first reading recounts how God fed the prophet Elijah in the desert. Here, he is fleeing from Jezebel after she promises to kill him for his slaughter of the prophets of Baal. He begs God to spare him this fate and kill him instead. But God feeds him twice before his forty-day trek (without food) to Mount Sinai, where Moses received the law.

The first reading reminds us of God’s concern for us, especially when we are persecuted. It also reminds us that persecution is not an excuse to wallow in self-pity or despair. When we pray these words of the Our Father prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” we are not only asking God for our basic needs. These words also express our trust in his unfailing providence. It is undoubtedly difficult to rely on God while being persecuted, even for a prophet as great as Elijah. But he assures us, especially with the Eucharist, to support us in such times, which we will certainly experience.

In the second reading, Saint Paul exhorts the church in Ephesus not to grieve the Holy Spirit with negative social interactions. Bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, reviling, and malice are unbecoming of a disciple of Jesus Christ. We are to practice his sacrificial love with our neighbors. Also, as partakers of his death through the Eucharistic sacrifice, we receive the grace to be more like him who came not to be served, but to serve (Matt 20:29).

In the Gospel for today, Jesus tells the Jews that he is the living bread that came down from heaven. The Jews are confused about how this seemingly ordinary man could make such a claim. Last week, we read that they asked him for the bread that would quench their hunger forever. But Jesus here is not talking about the bread that merely satisfies human hunger. Rather, he is talking about the bread that will help us achieve our ultimate goal – union with God forever.

What is eternal life? Our Lord says, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). That is why we were made – to know, love, and serve God (Baltimore Catechism, 1). We come to know God best through the Eucharist. That is our true food for the journey of our lives. 

Here too, we must remember the importance of the Viaticum, i.e., the Eucharist administered to those who are dying. The word is a combination of the Latin words “via tecum” meaning “with you on the way”. The church has always understood this sacrament to be food for the journey of the faithful leaving this life. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “It is the seed of eternal life and the power of resurrection, according to the words of the Lord: ‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day’" (CCC 1524). Have we thought about the importance of this sacrament for our last day?

Friends, let us always have recourse to that bread of eternal life, especially when persecuted or in danger of death. God has left us with the sacrament of his True Presence. May we have recourse to this sacrament at all times.

In conclusion, here is a translation of a stanza of Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Lauda Sion Salvatorem:

Lo, the Bread of Angels

is made the food of earthly pilgrims:

truly it is the Bread of children, 

let it not be cast to dogs.