Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time – Year B

# Il Corpo di Cristo è un concetto della teologia cristiana legato alla redenzione, alla vita eterna, alla condivisione, alla fratellanza e alla trasmissione della parola divina. Nella Messa cattolica, il sacerdote dice durante la preghiera eucaristica : « Quando fu pronto per essere consegnato ed entrare liberamente nella sua passione, prese il pane, rese grazie, lo spezzò e lo diede ai suoi discepoli, dicendo: « Prendete e mangiatene tutti: questo è il mio corpo che è dato per voi »

# According to the Old Testament, manna was the food of the Hebrews in the desert. According to the book of Exodus, the Jews murmured against Moses because they were starving. In the evening, quails fell from the sky; the next morning a mist or dew spread over them; when it had evaporated, something small, grainy and fine, like frost on the ground, appeared on the surface of the desert (Ex 16,14). Moses said to them : « This is the bread that the Lord gives you to eat ».

And further on : « The house of Israel called this food manna ». Manna fell from heaven every day except the Sabbath; on the eve of that day, twice as much fell. The children of Israel ate manna for forty years, until they came to an inhabited land; they ate manna until they reached the borders of the land of Canaan. The story is repeated in the Qur’an, in the Sura al-Baqara: « We have sent down the clouds for your shadow; We have sent you manna and quails and said to you : ‘Feed yourselves on the good things we give you’ ». 

This reference to the Last Supper, the meal before the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, is symbolic of the flesh given by the Messiah to save humanity from its sins. Shortly afterwards, the priest says : « Remembering the death and resurrection of your Son, we offer you, Lord, the bread of life ». More than forgiveness, the bread, as the officiant says, is the bread of life, the symbol of the resurrection brought to humanity by Jesus. The Body of Christ is the gift of the forgiveness of sins by the Messiah, the new word given that underlies the resurrection, and, above all, the bread of life through this Christic word that is meant to bring charity and brotherhood.

Moses led the people out of slavery; Jesus, through the gift of his body and his sacrifice, seeks to establish the cardinal and theological virtues. The Community of the Bread of Life was a new community of the Roman Catholic Church, founded in 1976 by Pascal and Marie-Annick Pingault and dissolved by Monsignor Jean-Claude Boulanger on 9 April 2015. # For the Doctor of the Church John Chrysostom, Jesus, in this miracle, posed himself as the creator of heaven and earth. With this gesture he also encouraged people to pray before eating and wanted to show the importance of sharing.

More modern theologians claim that the multiplication of the loaves is a symbol of the Word given by Christ, a word that has nourished people for centuries. For St Ephrem, during this miracle Jesus gave generously without counting the cost. He gave so much that twelve baskets remained. The saint also compared Jesus to Moses, who fed the people freed from slavery with manna that fell from heaven. For Benedict XVI, this gesture was a symbol of fraternal sharing, but also a symbol of the path that the apostles followed: to transmit the Good News.

Benedict XVI emphasised that this multiplication was the beginning of the Eucharist, which continues to this day. According to some theological interpretations, it prefigures the Last Supper, Jesus’ last meal with his disciples, establishing the rite of the Eucharist in which the bread would be the incarnation of Jesus’ body, given as a sacrifice on the cross to save humanity.

From the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to John

At that time, Jesus said to the crowd : « I am the living bread that came down from heaven: if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I will give is my flesh, given for the life of the world ». The Jews argued among themselves: « How can this man give us his flesh to eat ? « Then Jesus said to them: « Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. »

He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. As the living Father sent me and I live by the Father, so he who eats me will live by me. This is the bread that came down from heaven: it is not like the bread that the fathers ate. They died; whoever eats this bread shall live for ever. (Jn 6, 51-58)

The living bread from heaven

Did he mean that there were emissaries of the Sanhedrin in the synagogue in Capernaum where Jesus was speaking ? This is what John called those Galileans who, by murmuring, betrayed their opposition to Jesus.What scandalised them was that Jesus had presented himself to them as the bread that came down from heaven. In their ignorance, they saw a contradiction between this statement and the knowledge they had of Jesus’ family.They murmured among themselves, without openly expressing their opposition to the words they had just heard.Jesus did not respond to the objection of his listeners by revealing to them the mystery of his supernatural birth : for the miraculous origin of Jesus could only be accepted by an already believing heart.

These scruples were not the cause of their unbelief; it was their unbelief that gave rise to these scruples.He insisted on the necessity of a work of divine grace that had to be accomplished in every man who wanted to come to him and believe in him.  No one can do it any other way.This work, which he described in these words : ‘All that the Father gives me will come to me’, he characterised as an attraction of the Father to Jesus.God gives him souls by drawing them to himself.

No one can do it any other way. This work, which he described in these words: ‘All that the Father gives me will come to me’, he characterised as an attraction of the Father to Jesus. God gives him souls by drawing them to himself. God has, in his mighty hand, a thousand ways of exercising this action of his mercy on souls.Sometimes it is the painful experiences of life, suffering, the thought of death, that make them feel with sadness the need of a consoler, of a Saviour ; sometimes it is the bitter feeling of sin that awakens in them and inspires in them this cry of anguish : « What must I do to be saved ? »

 And as soon as Jesus appears, they recognise him as the one they were longing for. But God’s great means of drawing people to Jesus is his Word and his Spirit, who works ceaselessly in our humanity and seizes the right moments to do his work. Only experience, which is the great reconciler of contrasts, can teach us in this regard; let it teach the humble to say with a reformer : « We will, because it is given to us to will. « It is God who works the will and the execution in you, according to his good will, despite the apparent contradiction: « Work out your salvation with fear and trembling » (Phil 2, 2-13).

Be that as it may, as soon as a poor sinner is drawn to Jesus in this way, he takes on the task of completing Jesus said : « I am the bread of life ». After this profound instruction, provoked by the murmuring of the Jews, Jesus returned to his teaching on eternal life, which he communicated to believers by giving himself to them as the bread of life. Jesus referred the Jews to their objection: « The manna that fed their fathers in the wilderness did not keep them from dying ». But there is another bread that frees from death, the bread that came down from heaven that gives eternal life.

Jesus sums up all that he has just said by saying : « I am that living bread » and therefore life-giving, since it gives eternal life to those who appropriate it through faith and living communion with him. « The bread of life and the living bread, that which is the divine life realised in a human person, which came down from heaven in general and which came down from heaven in a historical and concrete sense, in the person of Christ ; the negative expression: he will not die, and the great positive affirmation: he will live forever » (Meyer).

With these words, Jesus presents his thought in a new light and moves on to the last part of his discourse. In the previous part he had spoken several times about the bread of life, a bread that came down from heaven and gives eternal life to those who eat it ; he had declared that this life-giving bread is himself and that the way to live by it is to believe in him. « To give his flesh and blood » cannot mean anything other than his death, moreover violent, in which his blood was shed. For flesh and blood are living human nature ; to give them is to give oneself up to death; to give them of this world, which is in death, is to redeem and save it.

The way to appropriate the fruits of Jesus’ death is to enter with him, through faith, into an intimate and personal communion. This is what Jesus expressed in the words : « Eat his flesh and drink his blood ». This has been the interpretation of most exegetes. Another is to see in this passage not the death of Jesus in particular, but his person and life in general, which he offers to those who believe in him, as the source of their spiritual life.

Deacon Michel Houyoux

Links to other Christian sites

Benedictine Abbeyin yhe desert : click here to read the paper → Twentieth Sunday In Ordinary Time, Year B

◊ Loyola Press : click here to read the paper → Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle B

♥ Video Father Emmanuel : click here →https://youtu.be/Tom8knkjzok