BIBLE STUDY #102


NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

August 5, 2012



READING 1

1 KINGS 19:4-8



Elijah went a day's journey into the desert,

until he came to a broom tree and sat beneath it.

He prayed for death saying:

"This is enough, O LORD!

Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers."

He lay down and fell asleep under the broom tree,

but then an angel touched him and ordered him to get up and eat.

Elijah looked and there at his head was a hearth cake

and a jug of water.

After he ate and drank, he lay down again,

but the angel of the LORD came back a second time,

touched him, and ordered,

"Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you!"

He got up, ate, and drank;

then strengthened by that food,

he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.



The Word of the Lord



READING 2

EPHESIANS 4:30-5:2



Brothers and sisters:

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,

with which you were sealed for the day of redemption.

All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling

must be removed from you, along with all malice.

And be kind to one another, compassionate,

forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.



So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,

as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us

as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.



The Word of the Lord



GOSPEL

JOHN 6:41-51



The Jews murmured about Jesus because he said,

"I am the bread that came down from heaven,"

and they said,

"Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph?

Do we not know his father and mother?

Then how can he say,

'I have come down from heaven?'"

Jesus answered and said to them,

"Stop murmuring among yourselves.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him,

and I will raise him on the last day.

It is written in the prophets:

They shall all be taught by God.

Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.

Not that anyone has seen the Father

except the one who is from God;

he has seen the Father.

Amen, amen, I say to you,

whoever believes has eternal life.

I am the bread of life.

Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;

this is the bread that comes down from heaven

so that one may eat it and not die.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven;

whoever eats this bread will live forever;

and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world."



The Gospel of the Lord



Reflection



Today’s Gospel reading is about faith in Jesus. It is only the last three verses that talk about Eucharistic bread, which is a transition into next Sunday’s gospel: that Jesus is the living bread given for the life of the world.



It was difficult (as you can imagine) for the Jews to accept Jesus as the bread from heaven. They knew his parents, how could he come down from heaven? They seem to reject him out of hand; these were the same ones Jesus just fed with 5 loaves and 2 fish. This should have brought some faith in Jesus, but it didn’t. It should have reminded them of the time when God fed them with manna in the desert while on the way from captivity to freedom in the Promised Land. The feeding of the 5,000 gave 12 baskets of leftovers, much more of an abundance than enough manna for one day.



The process of coming to believe (to have faith) in John’s gospel is called being drawn to God. If we believe in Jesus, we are drawn to him and receive the gift of faith, and then we will be taught be God. It is a combination of free will and divine initiative. Faith is a free gift from God that we can accept or refuse.



Those who refuse God’s beckoning are closing themselves off from God; and therefore they refuse the bread that will feed and nourish them. In this part of the discourse, bread refers to the teachings of Jesus and the revelation of the Father

through him.



However, if we are drawn to God, believe in his Son, and are fed by the God’s word, then we will have eternal life



Jesus then says 2 things that will turn people away from him. He says that their ancestors ate the manna in the desert and died; but if anyone eats the bread that comes down from heaven he will not die. He is setting himself as one greater than Moses, the great leader and lawgiver of the people. That in itself would turn many Jews away.



Secondly, he says that the “bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” He is referring to the sacrifice of himself on Calvary, and the giving of his ‘body and blood, soul and divinity’ in the form of bread and wine in the Eucharist. How was anyone suppose to understand prior to Pentecost?



Jesus is not calling us to an intellectual assent to a doctrine of faith only, but primarily to a relationship with him. We believe, that through Jesus, we have a share in God’s divine life. God has not left us hungering in the wilderness but is with us to feed, nourish, and guide us through life. Jesus life gives us hope.



We are called to offer our lives in service to others as Jesus did. We are called to be hope to a world full of despair, compassion in a world of pain, loving in a world of hate, and truth un a world of lies.



We believe that through faith we possess eternal life. Let’s share that great gift with others.







Fr. Phil