19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle
B
St. Francis De Sales Church
August 12, 2012
“Breads” and Our “Hungers”
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P.
Amato
A Mother’s Love
The well-known French author Victor Hugo tells a
very touching story of an incident taking place at the end of the French
Revolution. It is France, the year 1793.
In the story, a young mother and her two
children are homeless and poor. They
have wandered through the woods and fields for several days foraging for food.
They are living on roots, bulbs, and any edible
vegetation they can find. One morning,
they see two soldiers approaching and they hide in the underbrush.
One of the soldiers – a sergeant – spots them
and orders them to come out into the open.
He then brings the malnourished mother and children before his captain.
Instantly, the captain realizes that they are on
the verge of starvation. In an
extraordinary act of kindness he offers the mother a small baguette of bread.
Keeping her eyes on him, she takes it and
quickly breaks it into two and gives a half to each of her children. The children ravenously consume the bread, as
the mother watches with eyes filled with contentment.
Understandably sergeant is bewildered that the
mother has kept none of the bread for herself. He says to his captain, “Is it because the mother is not hungry?” The captain replies, “No, Sergeant, it is because she is a mother.”
The Story As a Metaphor
This mother’s love, in the gesture of giving her
starving children the bread, is a wonderful reflection of God’s love for us.
The bread is the only thing between life and
death for them and she gives it so willingly and they receive it so hungrily.
That half a baguette was for them, literally,
their bread of life.
In a similar way, Jesus in today’s Gospel, tells
us that God is giving himself to us as the “the
bread of life.”
Yes, God is the mother in the story; and yes, we
are the two starving children.
Three “Breads of Life”
So what is the bread for us? That is, what are the
sustaining elements of nourishment that we can touch, feel, eat, and understand?
I would hold that Jesus does indeed provide us with
the “bread of life” and that we have
only to notice it and be grateful for it.
For example, has the Word you’ve heard from this
ambo/pulpit, the remark of a preacher, or a line you’ve read in your bible,
ever sustained you? Got you through a tough time?
Remember at that moment how hungry, famished, ready you
were to hear something? And how God reached out and fed you with the bread of
life that was the Word?
Or recall a time when you felt unworthy, weak or
sinful, and admitting your weakness you hesitatingly came up this very aisle
and received the bread of life in your cupped hands?
The taste in your mouth of the bread of angles lingered
in your mouth and all was well. All was good again. You know well then the
sense of satiation, the curbing of hunger that those two hungry boys felt. And
here the bread of life was the Eucharist.
Finally, there is something within us that doesn’t
want to have us eat alone. You rarely see someone in a restaurant asking for a
table for one. We gather together as a family around a table and it is
important to note that the very gathering is life giving.
But look again, the gathering is not just a group of
folks hanging out at Bertucci’s or Bob Evans. It’s a group of fellow believers
who have been nourished on the same bread of the Word and have eaten the same
bread of the Eucharist, and have become the bread of life that is spiritual
community. And that, dear friends, makes all the difference in the world!
For we have a place where we belong, a place where we
receive consolation in our times of trouble and where we receive challenges in
our thinking or lifestyle.
One Qualification: Hunger
Like the two starving children, the only
qualification you need to be fed with the bread of heaven is hunger.
Jesus is “the
bread of life,” not just for the good or the best or the perfect. Jesus is
the bread of life for all of us – human, imperfect, with a mix of virtue and
sin, myself included.
Jesus himself never questions the worthiness of
anyone.
Whether he feeds 5,000 on a hillside, 12 at the Last
Supper, or the 250 of us here, he does not withhold the gift of bread from
those lacking in virtue. Again, the only
requirement is hunger.
So, we’re left with one question to answer for
ourselves: How hungry am I?
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