Do You Believe in the Real Presence? (18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B)
Enslaved in Egypt the Israelites cried out to God for help. God heard their cry and sent Moses to lead them out from Egypt to the Promised Land.
One would think they would be grateful but instead they “grumbled against Moses and Aaron…But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of hunger” (first reading).
They had cried out to God from slavery in Egypt. He gave them what they wanted, freedom. They should have been satisfied but they were not. They wanted more. What they wanted next, food, was reasonable. They needed to eat. They should have expected they would need food.
They did not trust in God. For us, it might be easy to say they should have trusted God since He had set them free from slavery. This was all new to them. To trust in God would require them to grow in relationship with him.
Do you trust in God to provide what you need?
God gave them quail and bread so that they would know that He was their God.
Even then they did not recognize the bread that came down from Heaven. They saw it on the ground and asked, “What is this?” The Hebrew word for “what is this” is manna and so the bread that God sent down from Heaven became known as Manna.
For forty years in the desert, God would provide the manna for them to it. They were not immediately completely transformed by it. They would grumble at other times.
Paul calls us (second reading) to “no longer live as the Gentiles do.” We are “put away the old self…be renewed in the spirit” of our minds and “put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.”
Do you rid yourself of secular ways to put on the way of Christ?
It is not easy. We cannot do it on our own. We need bread from Heaven but not simply manna. Jesus tells us, “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (gospel reading).
The Israelites could only gather enough manna for one day (except before the Sabbath). If they gathered more, it would rot. Jesus gives us bread “that endures for eternal life.
Do we recognize the bread that Jesus gives us for what it is? The bread Jesus gives us is his very self, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”
The bread that Jesus gives us is the Eucharist. It is sad that many people do not recognize the Eucharist for what it is. It starts as bread and wine. It continues to look like bread and wine but it is not.
In the consecration at Mass, the bread and wine are transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Christ. They do not look any different. If we look at the bread and wine with only our human eyes, we cannot see anything but earthly bread and wine. It is only when we allow ourselves to see as God sees that we are able to know that the bread and wine have become the Body and Blood of Jesus.
Our belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist starts with our use of reason as we hear Jesus say this is my body…this is the chalice of my blood but reason alone is not enough to belief in the Real Presence of Jesus. It requires faith, faith to trust in Jesus’ words.
When we accept the gift of faith to believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist we receive, we can then be transformed by what we receive. We take off the old self and put on the new self.
Peace,
Fr. Jeff