Afflicted and Hungry for the Eucharist

Introduction

Loving parents teach their children how to know their God given gifts and strengthen, and how to overcome their weaknesses. They will not always shield their children them from difficulties, but will stay alongside them, guiding them as they work through their problems strengthening their faith, character, and communion with God and community.

Body:

In our 1st reading, Moses is telling the Israelites, God has been doing that for them for 40 years in the desert, and says “ God let you be afflicted with hunger, but then he fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.”

God gathered his hungry and afflicted people and communed with them daily, feeding them mana from heaven. Bishop Robert Barron quoting Theologians Mathew Levering Principal says, “in a fallen world there is no communion without sacrifice.” No communion without affliction, and hunger.

No doubt like not remembered in recent history 2020 has been is a year of global afflictions suffering and sacrifice. Fear of death everywhere, unemployment, Church doors closed at Vatican, masked gloved quarantined, curfew, for murder, injustice and lawlessness. People are anxious, sad, and angry, what are you afflicted for today, what are you hungry for?

Conclusion:

Our merciful God has opened his church doors to gather us in community to feed us bread from heaven. To deliver us from our afflictions and hunger from crippling fears and anxieties, sadness and anger, God can do it, because God has given the ultimate sacrifice of his own son for the sin of the world, so that we can live by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. In the Gospel Jesus keeps repeating "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him”. We don’t just watch the sacrifice of the Mass; we consume it, come, it is for eating and drinking. We become what we eat, one with him and one with each other in that one loaf the apostle Paul tells us in the second reading. We don’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God, our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. +AMEN