+ NINETEENTH SUNDAY (B) +
8/3/21 Dear Brothers and Sisters, we’ve all heard the old saying – ‘There is no substitute for the human voice’. Suppose we say – there is no substitute for the Word of God ! Right? There is no substitute, :but the Word of God is at once the Son of God, the Bread of God , the Living Bread, and as we sang in our Vesper hymn the other day, the Eternal Bread.
The First Century might well be called the Century of ’the Great Divide’. There are some who say that Rabbinical Judaism is not biblical. The personal faith of members of the still-Chosen people is not in question. What is in question is the inability of official Judaism to recognize that the Promises and prophecies of the Old Testament have been fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah; that Jesus came, not to destroy Judaism but to enlighten it; not to convert Judaism but to fulfill it.. In that Century the Jewish people had a choice: either to believe in or deny a Trinitarian God and the Holy Eucharist. Most unfortunately, chose not to..
A good example of what Christianity can do and has done – is what St Patrick
did in Ireland – was to enlighten – not destroy the native culture. If the “10 Lost
Tribes of the Israelites” had actually ended up in Ireland, the peoples’ response to the Gospel there would have been like that encountered by the Lord in his time.
(I was assured by the Jewish Encylopaedia that the ‘Tribes’ never got there!))
Today’s Gospel account takes place right after Jesus’ ‘Multiplication of the Loaves’ and ‘Walking on the Water’ . Some years ago, I had the great privilege of sitting in the ruins of an old 4th Century synagogue in Capernaum, , under which are the foundations of an earlier synagogue – where Jesus had said to those present – “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will have no life in you!” That indeed was, and is, a hard saying! Sitting there in that old synagogue, I remember thinking that it is a lot easier for me to understand these words of Jesus than those who first heard them. Many present there were unable to accept his words and did not accept them due to their belief in a One-person God and the Mosaic prohibitions on the eating of some flesh and drinking of all blood. But Jesus meant what he said! He repeated what he said. He did not mean ‘maybe’! “Unless you eat…” In Aramaic there are two words for “eat”, one for humans and one for the way animals eat. A better translation, I understand ,would be: ”Unless you feed on my flesh…”
Those in the synagogue that day all knew about the Manna in the desert, the so-called ‘bread from heaven’. But Jesus did not come to give bread. He came to be our bread, to give his flesh and blood – to our flesh and blood – to have real communion with us and our participation in him as God and man. God wants to be as close to us as possible in our life of flesh and blood . The Trinity would not have it otherwise. How can Jesus give us his flesh to eat? As he told his questioners: “My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, abides in me and I in him. As the living Father has sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me, he also shall live because of me. This is the bread that has come down from heaven…He who eats this bread shall live forever.”
Every day in the Eucharist – the Bread of God, the Living Bread, the Eternal
Bread is given to us for communion with and participation in the Holy Trinity Thanks be to God! AMEN ! 1 Kgs 19:4-8, Eph 4:30- 5:2, John 6:41-51 Fr Alan