Thirsting for God

The Gospel reading for the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time is Luke 9:18-24. It begins:  

"Now it happened that as he was praying alone..."

Mother Teresa once said,

"The fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace."

There is both a history and geography of salvation. Jesus. Who is God, became a man with limitations, choosing a particular time and place to enter into history - Galilee during the reign of Herod under the Roman Empire. Like all of us, Jesus NEEDED to pray. He sought out solitude for His prayer. Peace is the goal of Jesus' prayer, yet He knew that He would have to suffer. So Jesus prayed AND He set His face toward Jerusalem. He probably prayed in a common cave that pilgrims visit in the Holy Land.

Jesus chose to have limitations - to be like us. Every time Jesus shows us that He is God in the Gospels, He first shows us that He is man. His humanity and His divinity are juxtaposed.

Jesus the Man/Jesus is God

• Incarnation (birth in a stable)/visit from the three kings
• Jesus lost at age 12/Jesus teaches the teachers
• Jesus thirsty in Samaria/Jesus tells the Samaritan woman everything she ever did
• Jesus asleep in boat during storm/Jesus calms storm
• Jesus climbs Mt. Tabor and is breathless/Jesus' Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor
• Jesus wept over death of friend, Lazarus/Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead
• Jesus suffers and dies on a cross/Jesus rises from the dead

In the Gospel reading, Jesus also affirms that He is the "Messiah of God", the Christ, the "Son of Man" and warns the Apostles not to say anything but predicts His own suffering and death before He is to rise again.

The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. ~ Luke 9:22

If we wish to follow Him, we must deny ourselves and take up our cross daily.

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. ~ Luke 9:24

If we die with Him, we will also rise with Him on the last day.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. . . . if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. ~ Romans 6: 5, 8

This is our inheritance. The second reading from Galatians tells us that we are all children of God in Christ Jesus, for we have been baptized into Christ. Through Baptism, we are all one in Jesus.

We belong to Him, and when we belong to Him, we are heirs of Abraham according to the promise. Our inheritance is resurrection from the dead on the last day.

The promise of the first reading from the prophet Zechariah is the promise of Jesus Christ. 

And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of compassion and supplication, so that, when they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a first-born. . . .On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness. ~ Zechariah 12:10-11; 13:1

The spirit of compassion and supplication is fulfilled in Christ who is pierced on the cross and Whose death we mourn.  Although we mourn, we also rejoice, for Christ is also the fountain that cleanses us from sin and uncleanness. Let us thirst for Him as the Psalm says.

O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is. So I have looked upon thee in the sanctuary, beholding thy power and glory. Because thy steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise thee. So I will bless thee as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on thy name. My soul is feasted as with marrow and fat, and my mouth praises thee with joyful lips, . . . for thou hast been my help, and in the shadow of thy wings I sing for joy. My soul clings to thee; thy right hand upholds me. ~ Psalm 63:1-5, 7-8

The Bread I Will Give

J

Thursday of the 3rd Week of Easter - John 6:44-51.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God.' Every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that any one has seen the Father except him who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh."

To silence their murmuring, Jesus further explains what is written in the prophets about Him. "All your sons shall be taught by the LORD, and great shall be the prosperity of your sons." (Isaiah 54:13) Those who do not hunger because they go to Jesus and those who do not thirst because they believe in Him (from John 6:35) are taught by God and the fact that God is the One Who teaches them is of vital importance. Although they have not seen the Father, they learn from Him through Jesus Who has seen the Father and comes from the Father. And so their prosperity is great: they shall not die, but live forever.
 

Finally, we reach the "hard saying" in chapter 6 that will separate the true believers from those who do not believe: "The bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh."

Jesus has explained about the manna eaten by their ancestors in the desert. It was bread that was perishable. The people eventually died who ate it. The manna or bread from heaven of which Jesus speaks is not the same. It is Jesus Himself and those who eat it will not die.

But Jesus has not yet given of His flesh. He refers to it as "I AM the living bread" and yet as "the bread which I SHALL give". Jesus IS the bread, but they will have to wait to receive this bread that is living. So fast forward to the Last Supper which is the Passover meal in the synoptic gospels. Jesus takes the unleavened bread of Passover and changes it when He says, 

"Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you." ~

Then He takes the cup of blessing and says,

"Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me."

In the gospel of John, Jesus did not drink the final cup at the Last Supper because it is the cup of His suffering. He finishes the Passover meal from the cross for Jesus IS the NEW Passover Lamb. Before He dies, He cries, "I thirst!", then drinks the fruit of the vine and cries "It is finished!" What is finished? His cry denotes that it is the end of the Passover sacrifice. Passover's final cup of blessing has been consumed. 

But none of this makes any sense until later, after the Resurrection. How was this first revealed? It was the disciples on the road to Emmaus who first came to know Jesus in the breaking of the bread. The flesh to which Jesus refers IS His flesh but who do they receive? It is the Risen Lord. Jesus, the man of history, was constrained by time and space just as we are. But following the Resurrection, Jesus' human form has been TRANSFORMED. His body is no longer bound by time and space. So the Risen Christ is present to us now in all times and in all places, but in a very special way in the Eucharist in the breaking of the bread. 

At every Mass,we again hear the priest, acting in persona Christi, say the marvelous words.

"Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you." ~

"Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me."

Only through Jesus' death AND Resurrection does the bread become His flesh and ordinary wine become His Precious Blood. We do not receive Christ in the tomb when we take Communion, but the Risen Lamb of God who is the living bread. The blood of the new and everlasting covenant that was shed on the cross is given to us as the cup of life for Jesus has risen from the dead. The death and Resurrection of Jesus changes everything. It turns death on its head. This is what happens when God dies on a cross and rises from the dead. He comes to us hidden - in distressing disguise, as Mother Teresa would say. 

"When Jesus came into the world, He loved it so much that He gave His life for it. He wanted to satisfy our hunger for God. And what did He do? He made Himself the Bread of Life." ~ Mother Teresa