18TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME B
BREAD OF TEARS AND
FEARS
Fr. Richmond was preparing to
start the Mass in a little barrio chapel when bullet shots rang out. The startled
parishioners saw their priest sprawled on the floor, lifeless on the spot where
he stood Sunday after Sunday preaching the living Word and breaking the Bread
of life. While the attackers fled, the people experienced a different kind of
Mass. The bread was real body given up for them and the wine was real blood
poured out for them.
Jesus knew that people would seek
him out for the wrong reasons. They saw the miracle and they came to increase
their fascination. They ate the multiplied bread and they thought that to follow
him would be life without hunger and pain. The people thought that Moses’ manna
had returned for good.
The Lord transformed the people’s
expectations by leading them to a new understanding. The true Bread that came
down from heaven was not a gustatory delight, however fleeting and temporary. The
true Bread has come to give life – abundant and enduring. This Bread was now a
Person, the totality of Jesus himself – his presence, his message, his death
and resurrection.
Whenever we hear the words of the
gospel today, "I am the bread of life,” we usually think of our Holy
Communion. There we receive the sacramental bread which is a fresh, fragile,
crisp and immaculate wafer. While outwardly we receive this kind of bread,
inwardly we come in contact with the real Bread from heaven, Jesus himself. He gives
life by losing his own. He brings joy through his suffering on the cross.
Many times we hold on to a faith
in Jesus that is all about happiness, wealth, success, deliverance and bliss.
Yes, this is what God wants for us as his gift and reward. But Jesus leads us
to blessings through the painful act of losing. He leads us to joy through a
downpour of tears. How else can we explain the puzzles of Christian life –
temptations, sufferings, defeats, losses, anxieties, sickness and death. These
too, God wants us to pass through as our purification, strength and victory.
The next time we line up for
Communion, let us imagine Jesus’ sweat, blood and tears. And let us unite to
him the mess of our lives, the brokenness of our dreams, and the wounds of our
struggles. We recover the real meaning of the Eucharist when we feel the broken
body and spilled blood – of Jesus and of ourselves.
