Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The gospel extract today from St. John relates how the enthusiastic crowd pursued Jesus, but for the wrong reasons. They had just enjoyed a wonderfully free meal of bread and fish and wanted to see and hear more of the One who provided such marvellous fare. In his dialogue with them, Christ tried to raise their minds from their purely material appetites to another kind of food which he alone could offer them. The Lord urged them not to be so immersed in the daily task of finding food that they neglect their spiritual needs and their relationship with God. The Father was offering the world the true food from heaven in the person of his Son. Unlike our earthly nourishment which constantly needs replenishing, what Jesus now brings comes from heaven and is eternal.
In order to have access to this heavenly food Jesus challenges the crowd to believe in him as the One whose acts with the full authority of God. They react by demanding that he perform a sign, similar to the manna which Moses provided for the people of Israel during their desert wandering on the way to the land of promise. That manna was only temporary however, but now God offers food of a higher order which only those with faith in Jesus can receive. In response to the crowd’s eager desire to have this heavenly manna, the Lord Jesus tells them that he himself is the bread of life. If they come to him and make the leap of faith then their deepest hunger and thirst will be satisfied.
Our world has often been described as materialistic. The very persuasive world of advertising has as its aim the purchase and acquisition of goods and possessions which, while good in themselves, do not and cannot satisfy those deeper longings of the human heart. We have spiritual appetites and wants and to neglect these does not help us to flourish as persons as God would wish. This gospel passage takes our minds back to how Jesus himself wrestled with the devil’s temptation to materialism after his forty days fasting in the desert. Christ is ever offering us a fresh start, a new way of looking at things, so that we do not become entrapped by daily preoccupations which are ultimately transitory. As Paul expresses it in his letter to the Church at
Ephesus, “we are to put on the new self which has been created in God’s way.”

+Michael Campbell OSA
Bishop of Lancaster

(from the Diocesan website)