“Sir, Give Us This Bread Always,” Third Tuesday of Easter, April 16, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter
Memorial of St. Bernadette Soubirous
April 16, 2024
Acts 7:51-8:1, Ps 31, Jn 6:30-35

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• Today we enter into the fourth day of the Octave of mystagogical catechesis on the Holy Eucharist and how through this divine gift we intensify our relationship with the Risen Christ. After Jesus stressed that the work of God was to believe in Him whom the Father had sent — which, to facilitate that faith, Jesus had worked the “sign” of the multiplication of loaves and fish and walked on water — the crowds nevertheless asked, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?” The sign that he had just worked across the Sea of Galilee for them, multiplying a small boy’s dinner of five buns and two small fish to feed a crowd of 5,000 men, a sign that got them to follow him several miles along the upper lip of the Sea in a flotilla of boats, was apparently not miraculous enough for them, nor were any of the scores of cures that he had worked in Capernaum in previous visits. Still obsessed about food and free meals, they asked him for a sign that the rabbis had long said that the prophet whom Moses had promised would eventually come after him (Deut 18:15) would work to show that he was Moses’ successor: just like Moses had fed the Israelites in the desert with manna, so the one who would come after him would do the same and rain down from them this daily nourishment from heaven. So they said to him, “What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
• We remember the story of the manna. The Jews were grumbling in the desert, fearful that they would starve to death. So Moses brought their complaints and pleas to God, and God replied by saying, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day” (Exod 16:4). And every morning for forty years, they awoke to find a miraculous edible dew that looked like coriander seed, with the white like gum resin, tasting like wafers made with honey (Num 11:7; Exod 16:31). They Israelites had no idea what it was, and hence called it “manna,” which literally means, “What is it?” Moses told them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat” and instructed them to gather as much of it as each needed for a day. This is how they survived in the desert for forty years, until they reached the promised land.
• In reply to that test for a sign, Jesus first corrected them, saying it wasn’t Moses who gave them the manna, but God the Father. Then he basically said that the rabbis were right and the One to whom Moses would point would in fact give them this celestial food, but that he was that true Manna, the food that people need to survive in the desert of human life: “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Their response was materialistic but nevertheless prophetic: “Sir, give us this bread always,” and Jesus made plain what the sign he would give a year later during the Last Supper as a perpetual response to that prayer would be: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” That’s the food for which he wants us to labor — as he told us in yesterday’s section of this discourse — more than the most hardworking parent strives to put material food on his kids’ table.
• I’ve always been struck that God in his wisdom made the Israelites have to go get the manna every morning except the Sabbath (so that they wouldn’t have to work). Even on the Sabbath, however, they would eat the second daily portion of manna that they had gotten the day before. God said he made them do this every day in order to “test them,” Exodus recalls, to see whether or not they would follow his instruction and be faithful (Exod 16:4). Throughout their entire time in the desert until they entered the promised land, they received this heavenly gift through this daily work and daily sustenance. In a similar way, Jesus taught us to pray in the Our Father, not, “Give us today all the bread we’re going to need this week” or “Give us now all we’ll ever need,” but “Give us this day our daily bread,” because he wanted us to recognize that every day God wants to grant that prayer. The early saints of the Church commented at length about the Greek word we translate as “daily” — epi-ousios — which literally means “super-substantial.” They said it referred less to the material bread that we need to consume for physical survival, but to the bread that goes beyond our substance — the Eucharist — that we need for our souls. The early saints said that Jesus was teaching them to pray that the Father would give them every day the Eucharist. In other words, when Jesus said that he was the “real manna,” the “true bread come down from heaven,” he was intending to be our daily portion of food throughout our lifetime in the desert of life, until, God-willing, we enter into the eternal promised land of heaven, the eternal life that is the consequence of genuinely entering into communion with Christ through the Holy Eucharist. In response to the request of the Jews, “Sir, give us this bread always,” Jesus has, by giving us his body and blood and making it available not just on Sunday in special way, but every day, in the places where there is a priest who is faithful to the daily celebration of the Mass. This is among the gifts we are celebrating during the ongoing Eucharistic Revival.
• That brings us to what our response is to this incredible gift of himself that the Lord gives us every day. Why do we think he does it? Do we think it’s merely to provide some “bonus” to those like us who can conveniently come to Mass each day, or rather to give sustenance to all the people he created and redeemed because he knows we need him every day? It was of course possible for a Jew in the desert to skip a day, or two or three, in going out to obtain the daily manna. But over the course of time, the person would become weaker, hungrier and more vulnerable. If God went through the effort to feed them every morning, it’s because he knew that they needed to be fed every day. It’s the same way with the “real Manna” of the Holy Eucharist. God has desired to give us each day this “daily bread come down from heaven,” because he knows that we need to be spiritually fed each day. I’m convinced from both personal and pastoral experience that one of the real proofs of whether we recognize that the Eucharist really is Jesus, and whether we truly love the Lord, can be seen in our attitude toward daily Mass. Even if a Catholic cannot physically be present every day at Mass because of other pressing responsibilities, our hearts should always be longing for this encounter. That should be our great hunger. “Give us that bread always” and “Give us today our supersubstantial Bread!” should be our most persistent aspirations. And our gratitude to God’s answering that prayer by raining down for us each day this true Bread from heaven should know no bounds. For those of us who have daily Mass as part of our spiritual regimen, it’s not enough for it to remain there. One of our tasks is to help the whole Church come to appreciate this gift and join us in receiving Him. Jesus says, “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world,” and later he will add that unless we eat his flesh and drink his blood we have no life, no zoe (supernatural life), in us, even if we still have bios (biological life). Those who aren’t living Eucharistic lives are, to some degree, spiritually dead, or at least not anywhere near as spiritually alive as God would want them to be, as he wants to help them to be through communion with Him Risen from the dead.
• Today we can focus on two examples of those who lived truly Eucharistic lives. The first is in today’s first reading. St. Stephen’s strength came from his faith in the One God has sent, from his communion with Jesus’ risen life that could not be extinguished even if all the rocks and stones of the world had landed on him at once. He was fed by the Lord to give witness to his living presence, his face radiated with the risen presence of God-with-us, and even as he was being stoned to death, he was totally united to the Lord. As he was thrown into the pit and began to beg pelted, his first words were not, “Help me, Jesus!” or even “Save me, Jesus!,” which would have been totally legitimate prayers of faith. Instead it was, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” a sign that he had regularly been entrusting his body and spirit to Jesus in their regular meeting in the celebration of the Eucharist. And later he showed the depth of his communion with the One who had told us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, and pray for our persecutors when he, echoing Jesus’ words to the Father from the Cross, “forgive them for they know not what they do,” said, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And that prayer, made in communion with Christ, was efficacious in the life of Saul, who converted to become the greatest apostle of all. The zoe, the supernatural life in St. Stephen, was in a sense prayerfully and contagiously passed on to Saul, so that as Paul he could eventually bring many others to say with him, “For me to live is Christ” and the “life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.” And he sought to pass on to those who were opposing him a similar faith. When St. Stephen spoke to them as a “stiff-necked people” incapable of turning to the right or left, he was saying that they don’t want to be converted and appealing to them in mercy. When he said that they were “uncircumcised in heart and ears,” he meant that their heart and ears weren’t consecrated to God, they weren’t open to faith, which comes through hearing and loving before we ever understand it. When he said, “You always oppose the Holy Spirit … just like your ancestors,” he was seeking to open them up to what God was seeking to do in them now. It’s a call for us to be docile, to turn our faces through our necks always to the Lord, to consecrate our ears to faithfully receiving his message and our hearts to burning for life for him who speaks, and to follow always the Spirit’s promptings just like our saintly ancestors!
• The second example is the inspiring and humble saint the Church celebrates today, whose statue is prominently right next to me in this grotto dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes. St. Bernadette Soubirous died 145 years ago today. The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared 18 times to her in 1858 in Lourdes. I had the great joy to invoke her as the patroness of the second parish where I was pastor. She was one who labored for the food that endures to eternal life. Because she was illiterate and couldn’t read her catechism, she still hadn’t made her first Holy Communion by the time the Blessed Virgin started appearing to her when Bernadette was 14. Once it became clear to her pastor, however, that Mary was favoring her in this way, he was somewhat ashamed that he hadn’t done his duty in preparing her for Holy Communion, so he asked the parochial vicar to get her ready to receive Jesus. After she had made her first Holy Communion, a woman named Mademoiselle Estrade asked her, “What made you happier, Bernadette, first Holy Communion or the Apparitions?” Bernadette replied, “The two go together. They cannot be compared. I only know that I was very happy on both occasions.” With her simple wisdom, Bernadette points all of us to something really important. St. Bernadette is famous today because God chose her to be the recipient of Mary’s apparitions, but she was clearly indicating that the gift each of us receives in Holy Communion is just as important. (I actually think it’s even more important to receive Jesus, the Son of God, than his mother, but insofar as both were special gifts of the same divine Giver, it’s acceptable to equate them). She shows us to treat the reception of Holy Communion each day as a gift as valuable as a rare apparition of the Blessed Mother that would make us famous 145 years after our death? Later in life, St. Bernadette wrote about how God had made her great, not so much through the apparitions, but through the Eucharist. “I was nothing and of this nothing God made something great. In Holy Communion I am heart to heart with Jesus. How sublime is my destiny!” How sublime is all of our destinies! Today on her feast day, we recognize how sublime is our destiny, to receive Jesus, the Bread of Life, as our daily manna.
• “Sir, give us this Bread always.” Jesus has answered that prayer. Full of gratitude, like St. Stephen and St. Bernadette, let us now receive that response!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download