“Bread from Heaven”. What is our Lord teaching us through this simple sign of bread, of food?
Mission of Divine Mercy
Homily: 2024-08-11 Food and Faith
The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. This is the third in the series of five Sundays that we have the parts of the gospel from the great teaching of John chapter six, which is preparing us, and it begins at the last verse we heard today, preparing us for the revelation about the Holy Eucharist. And so before he gets to that point, before he gets to the great revelation, he's first of all, preparing his listeners for that. And so how is he preparing them? What is the necessary preparation that they need to receive his revelation? And this you can see Jesus struggling to prepare his listeners. What they need is faith. And so he began with the miracle of the loaves and fishes as a sign, and then he uses that miracle to talk about bread, the bread of life. So let's think a little bit about that, about bread. Why bread? Why such a big part of this gospel, such a great part of his revelation is focused on bread? So we know that we need food, right? We need food, we like food, we need it. But we can forget today how much from lot of humanity, how much, and even today for a lot of humanity, how much of a struggle it is to have enough food to eat. You know, the animals, the main thing animals do throughout a lot of their day is try to find food and try to avoid becoming food, right? It's a real battle. And a lot of humanity throughout history has been struggling every day to have enough to eat. What makes something nourishing? So let's think about it. These are simple things, but it's helpful to think about this and how it relates to what Jesus is teaching. One thing, so one thing, of course, for something to be good food for us, one thing is it needs to be nourishing. You know, you don't wanna eat sawdust or cardboard. You don't wanna eat something that is poisonous. So something like good bread, good bread. And so what is, that's nourishing for our body. What is nourishing for our soul, for our heart? Our heart, which needs love, it needs truth, it needs beauty. So what is most nourishing for our heart and soul is God himself. The greatest nourishment for our soul is God. And Jesus says, for the bread of God, bread of God gives life to the world. So this is a divine bread, the bread of God. But the problem is that God often has seemed so far away. And that's been a struggle throughout all of human history. God has often seemed so far away. We don't know who He is, we don't know what He is. And so mankind comes up with all inspired by evil spirits, comes up with all sorts of idols and superstitions. God seems so unreachable. And so it's not enough for food to help us. It's not enough that it be nourishing if we can't get to it, right? That's simple. It's important to be good food, but if we don't have access to it, it doesn't do us any good. And so it has to be accessible to us. And so God, who has often seemed so inaccessible to mankind, what does Jesus say here? He says, for the bread of God, is that which comes down from heaven. And instead of staying infinitely far off in heaven, it comes down from heaven. That is to become accessible to us. So it becomes accessible. But it's not enough that the food be accessible. It also has to be digestible. Why doesn't Jesus say, I am the wheat of life? Did you ever think about that? Why does it say, I am the wheat of life? Have you ever tried to eat wheat? Just wheat, straight wheat? You can do it. First of all, if you don't chew it, it just goes straight through your body. It doesn't nourish the body. The body can't digest it. Try it sometime. I've tried it. If you just eat a seed, both out chewing it, it just goes straight through your body. Your body doesn't digest it. It doesn't do any good. So you can chew wheat, grains of wheat, but it's hard, hard to do. If you were just subsistence grains of wheat, you wouldn't, it's hard, hard to chew on. So what do we do? We take the wheat and we grind it into flour and then mix it with water and maybe salt and other things. And then, traditionally, it was let fermenting. Ferment, like the sourdough process of fermenting the bread. And then baking it. Homemade bread that's baking smells so good. And it not only smells good, but all that whole process, that whole traditional process, makes it much more digestible and much more nutritious. And so Jesus doesn't say, "I am the wheat of life." He says, "I am the bread of life." Again, wheat is very hard to digest. Bread is very digestible. And so God doesn't just come down from heaven, but what else does he do? He becomes man. He doesn't just come down, he becomes man. So the invisible God, who is beyond completely beyond what we can perceive, becomes visible as a man, so that we can see him and know him, so that we can think, for instance, of the people in the time of Jesus, they could hear him speaking human words. And he's left us parables, parables, simple examples, just like this example of bread, that are much easier for us to understand. And even by his example shows us what it would be like to live a holy life. And so by becoming man, it's much more accessible to our intelligence. We could say like he's much more digestible for our intelligence. And so to summarize this, a food to be a good food for us, it has to be nourishing, it has to be accessible, and it has to be digestible. So let's say you have a very nourishing food right there in front of you, a very bread, or if you're gluten-tolerant, some of the food, is that enough for it to be right there, this good bread for it to nourish you? What else has to be done? We have to eat it, right? And so this is what Jesus is talking about, because what does that act of eating represent? That act of taking the food in us, it represents faith. Think, for instance, what you don't eat. Maybe you don't eat it because you don't like it. Like a little kid who's given peace or carrots or something doesn't like it, and what does he do? No, poof, they'll go to the carrots. So some food can be accessible and nourishing and digestible, but we don't like it, we don't want to eat it. And of course, that's a big danger. Today, we get so addicted to junk food that we lose our taste for healthy food. One thing that helps a lot is if we're hungry. If we're hungry, we're much more open to eating good food. So one thing is that we have to be willing to eat it, but there's another thing. Say, for instance, you're taking a walk out of nature and you're pretty hungry and you'd like to eat something, and you find some mushrooms. Are you gonna eat those mushrooms? I remember I heard a story when I was in Switzerland where we were visiting a monastery, a convent, and they said that the nuns there, someone had given them some local mushrooms, and they had eaten them and they'd all had to go to the hospital because they turned out to be the wrong mushrooms. Mushrooms can be very dangerous. And so we have to be careful, right? Sometimes we don't trust, and we don't trust, I don't know if this is a good food or not. So we don't trust it. Or say like the president of the United States, do you think, when someone says, oh, Mr. President, I made you some cookies or a cake or something, do you think he eats all that? 'Cause he has to be careful, right? You have to be careful if you're a very important person, people might wanna poison you. And so sometimes you don't trust the food or you don't trust the person who's giving it to you. So those are important things for us to eat something. Or you know, I'll say like, I don't know, maybe like there's some milk and refrigerating, you're not sure if the milk is good, right? So you smell it, you don't know that. That doesn't smell too good until you don't eat it 'cause you don't trust it. And so for the food to help us and not only has to be good, but we have to trust it and then we have to eat it. Of course, that's very simple, right? We do this all the time, but that helps us understand what Jesus is teaching us here. You know, when you take something, when you decide to eat something, you maybe chew on it. You know, to think of that expression we use, I need to chew on this. I need to, like, I need to think about this. You need to chew on this. And then we also need to not just chew it. You know, sometimes you chew something, you spit it out, right? And so we need to not just chew on it, but we need to swallow it. That's a big step. 'Cause once you swallow it, then it's hard to go back. So each time you decide to swallow, you're kind of committing. You know, sometimes we say about something that's hard to swallow. That idea is hard to swallow. And if it's good food that we swallow, that we've chewed and we swallow, then it becomes part of us. And it can help nourish us and strengthen us. It's a, that's pretty mysterious how, how food outside of us can become part of us. And so that's the next step. Not only does the food have to be nourishing and accessible and digestible, but we have to eat it. So here in the gospel, we see them saying, Lord, finally they say, Lord, give us this bread always. So now they're asking, now they're saying, okay, we're willing to take this bread that you're talking about, give it to us. And so what does Jesus say? He says, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall not hunger. He who believes in me shall never thirst. Notice what Jesus did not say here. He didn't say anything about eating. That will come next when he talks about the Holy Eucharist. But here first of all, he's just talking about faith in him. So he says, he who comes to me will not hunger. And then to explain what he means by coming to him to make it even clearer, he says what? He who what, believes in me will not thirst. That is, here he's talking about the way that we receive and we nourish ourselves from God himself is by believing in him. When we believe in him, his graces penetrate into us. Because God offers his graces, but if we don't accept them, they don't penetrate. Like someone offering you good food that you refuse to eat. We have to believe and it's the act of believing which permits them to enter into us. The act of trusting and believing. So again he says, he who believes in me shall never thirst. That's the essential thing, believing in him. And he says, but I said to you that you have seen me and yet you do not believe. So that's what Jesus is struggling to prepare them because they don't believe him. Because faith is difficult. Because what God is wanting to give is so immense. And yet the appearances are so poor. Hidden under such poor appearances that it's hard. It's hard, it's hard often for us to trust. And sometimes this bread that the Lord gives. Sometimes it tastes very good. And sometimes it tastes very, well, it's not a cake. Sometimes it's hard to swallow what the Lord is revealing. There's things which the Lord, and we're going to see that. The case is going to talk about the Eucharist. It's the case when he, for instance, when he talked about what was going to happen to him. When he told Peter and the apostles that, that was very hard for them to swallow. They didn't swallow it. They didn't accept it. He said, this is what they're going to do to me. I'm going to have to suffer and die. And they didn't accept that. And they rejected it. So they weren't swallowing it. They weren't accepting. They weren't believing. They weren't trusting it. And that often happens. So this invitation to believe is this invitation to Jesus invited us to accept what he's saying, to trust him, to take in his Word. So that by receiving the Word of God, we can be nourished by his love and his truth. Because if we believe the Word of God, then that reveals to us how much we are loved. And it reveals to us the truth. For instance, because this is the big. The first reading today was about the prophet Elijah. Elijah is told by the angel to eat this bread and drink the drink that he is being given. So that he can continue that the great prophet Elijah. The big struggle that our little mission is involved with right now involves words which we believe are prophetic words. That is the words not from us, but from God. Giving us a special revelation about our times. Because a lot of people say, "Well, you know, things are kind of normal. You know, the churches had ups and downs throughout our history, and that's kind of what's going on right now. Maybe sometimes we like Pope A and we don't like Pope B, but that's just the way things are. It's just kind of normal. And that's what's oftentimes one of the roles of prophetic words is to wake us up to dangers that we're not aware of. Like that was happened so many times that Israelites the prophet had to say, "You don't realize how dangerous this situation is, and how much the evil that you've grown accustomed to is preparing a terrible chastisement." And so one of the things these prophetic words do is they reveal truth. A true prophetic word reveals the truth so we can understand the time we're living. So they can wake us up and alert us to the dangers that we're living. But also, and one thing that so many people have told us from people who have responded to these prophetic words that they said, it's given them so much consolation and peace, and it's given them hope. Hope is in short supply today. A lot of people have given up hope. And these messages I know that they do for me give me hope to realize that as bad as things seem, everything is in God's hands. And God has a plan, and so that can give peace and consolation that God has an abandon us, that He loves us. But all that comes to those graces come to those who accept His words. Those who reject the words don't receive those same graces. And so here, the very struggle that the mission is going through right now is like a good example of what Jesus is talking about. People are being presented with these prophetic messages, and each person has to discern, is this something good? Is it something true? Is it something that I can trust and take in and accept? Or is it something bad that I need to reject? Because God gives us His word in Scripture. But the role of the prophets has been to give God's word for particular people or particular time. Because just like say that you might need a special food and special situations in your life, there might be a time in which you need special energy or there might be a time in which maybe you've been kind of sick and you need food which is lighter or different, sometimes we need different types of food. And so the prophetic messages are given us the food we need for right now. But of course, there has to be a discernment. Is this truly the food of God or not? And so that's an example of how Jesus is talking about this act of faith. As He prepares us for His great revelations, what He needs from us is faith. And that's the whole role, that's the primary mission. He's called our little, this mission of Divine Mercy too. Our Charism is faith so that God can act. He needs to strengthen our faith so that we let God receive His words and let His power act through us. And so next week, God willing will be talking about the next revelation which is about the Holy Eucharist. But today in this Mass with our Blessed Mother, we hear that listen to these words. The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. So that's Jesus Christ and it's His words. His words. And He continues that also through the prophetic words that He continues to give. Like the words for instance He gave to St. Faustina or the words He gave to St. Margaret Mary. The words He gave through our Blessed Mother, our native Guadalupe. And I think also the words He's giving right now and I believe in the prophetic messages that He's also sharing with our community. He's giving words that are coming from heaven to nourish us for the battle we're in right now. Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall not hunger. He who believes in me shall never thirst." And so this Mass is an opportunity for us to renew our trust in Jesus. To come to Him to receive His words so that He and His graces can come into us. Jesus, we trust in you. Amen.