What is the Real Food?

 (Fr. Andrew’s Homily for Sunday, August 4^th 2024)

1.  The Jewish people were ready to abandon the Lord because of their hunger (Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15). They thought that disobeying the Lord and going back to Egypt was the best for them. Their desires blinded them so much that they forgot that in Egypt they were slaves. Their bellies were full in Egypt, but they were treated like animals, oppressed by hard work, regarded as slaves and as people without dignity. In response to their grumbling, God gives them what they need and more than that: He gives them also the manna, a mysterious bread from Heaven... St. Paul tells the Ephesians to “put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires” (Ephesians 4:22). Bad desires are deceitful: they seem to lead us to happiness but, by leading us away from God, bad desires actually are like a slope leading to the cliff. It’s easy to slide down the hill, but the end is not the one we were expecting...

In the Gospel (cf. John 6:24-35), the Jewish people are looking for Jesus but for the wrong reason. Like the Israelites from the Old Testament, they want food from Jesus: they are looking for the food that perishes. They wanted to make Him king, simply to have themselves more prosper lives. Jesus tells them clearly: “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life” (6:27) And when they ask, “What are the works of God?” Jesus tells them to believe in Him: “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent” (6:29).

2.  “Man does not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Bread is the food of the belly: eat well and healthy every day... and you will die one day, any way. The food of our intelligence is Jesus’ truth, the food of our soul is God’s love. Bread does not give you the answers you need, bread does not give you reassurances beyond this life. Pleasures do not give you the love you are looking for. Pleasure is fleeting, true love is always there for you. Without God’s truth and without God’s love human being is like a slave, oppressed by hard work and without rest, with a full belly perhaps, but without sense of his dignity, without sense of being loved. We are not made for bread but for God. We cannot work only for bread, we must also feed our souls. We are not pagans, we are not animals: we are human beings in need of food, but also and most importantly in need of truth, and in desperate need of an unfailing love.

3.  Anxiety is endemic to our culture because it is a culture without God. We never feel safe, we fear the unknown, because we cannot feel God’s love for us. When a child is left alone, he is afraid, feels unprotected and abandoned. The modern human being feels that way, deep down, no matter how loud he claims that all is good. Modern man is loud about its success, fills his life with loud noise, because he needs to extinguish that interior voice crying out for a Father, for order, for meaning, for love. Man does not live on bread alone... we are sliding without realizing to our own destruction, and Jesus is today waking us up: “Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life” (John 6:27).

What is that food? It’s a Person, it’s the truth about that Person and is the love of that Person for you. “I am the Bread of Life” (John 6:35), Jesus said. If you believe in Him, He will show you His face, and He will share everything He is with you. Deep down, all we need is a person, but our desire for a personal relationship is never satisfied by a human person. Only God can satisfy the deep thirst of a human heart. And Jesus is offering precisely that, His love, Himself, in exchange of the same, that is, yourself. He wants, not your money, but your faith; not your food, but your love.

4.  Believing in Jesus is not easy, this is why Jesus calls “work” this act of faith (cf. John 6:29). Loving Jesus also requires sometimes difficult decisions. Now, regular food is not so important but we still work hard at satisfying our material needs. How then should we work for our spiritual food? What time and what energy should we employ?

Relationships require time, and quality time. The more we live the better we become at realizing who are those people who really want to be with us, and who are those watching the clock, because they would rather be somewhere else. I wish we realized today that Jesus is not like that, that Jesus is instead offering you His friendship and almighty love. And rather than thinking about how poorly we have responded to Him so far, I invite you today to acknowledge Jesus’ offer as an offer to you, in particular, and ask yourself what does Jesus want from you, in particular, in this moment of your life. If you do what Jesus asks from you, you will also experience how true it is what Jesus said, “whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst” (John 6:35).