19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle B
August 13, 2006
Our Lady of Grace
Food for Our Journey
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato
Roadside Eating
This morning, for just a minute, imagine that you are driving north on I-95 and the New Jersey Turnpike, heading for New York.
It is easy to pull off at the Chesapeake House or the Walt Whitman rest-stop or wherever for something to eat. There we can choose a Sbarro Pizza, a Nathan’s hot dog, a Chick-fila and on it goes.
Or even marketing a Wegman’s, you can get a full-course meal to eat in the upstairs eating area and watch the shoppers from the “gallery.”
The point is that when we are traveling, for long or short distances, or even running errands, we can easily find enough food. There is plenty of food to take care of us on our journeys and whatever we are doing.
The Journey of Life
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is talking about another kind of journey and another kind of food.
The journey he is talking about is our passage through this life. It is the journey of human life itself.
On this journey, each of us will experience joys and sorrows, ups and downs, moments of struggle and moments of ease. We will probably experience times of good health and times of sickness.
But Jesus desperately wants us to know that there is one absolutely steady reality throughout all of life. With all the many variables in the journey of life, he, God, the Bread of Life is steady and constant and always there for us.
Food for the Journey
God is the guide, the companion, the food and the goal of all our journeying.
Let’s just allow that to sink in. God is the guide, the companion, the food and the goal of all our journeying.
If we accept this truth, then our journey through life will find its proper direction and achieve its proper goal. Then we will experience both strength and real spiritual growth on our journey.
In the early 1900’s, a French philosopher named Simone Weil put it this way. She said that spiritual growth begins only when we stop seeing ourselves as the center of the universe.
So, if we stop seeing our ideas and our comfort and our plans as the be-all and end-all of everything, then we can more easily direct our journey to God.
Then our appetite will really be whetted by the food that God provides for our journey, for the Bread of Life that Jesus offers us today.
Today’s Scripture: Journey and Food
We see a great example of this turning from self to God in today’s first reading.
The prophet Elijah is relying too much on himself. He is holding himself too much as the center of the universe.
The result is that he gives up and asks to die. Then the Lord intervenes and offers Elijah food for the journey. He tells him to “Get up and eat the bread that I give you, or else the journey will be too long for you.”
Elijah does this and he gets the strength to carry on. He has abandoned himself as the center of everything.
He allows God to be the guide, the companion, the food and the goal of his journey. He has directed his journey more clearly to God.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus offers all of us a similar opportunity. He makes it clear that he is “the bread of life, the bread that has come down from heaven, for us to eat and live forever.”
Jesus feeds us, first, with the bread of his teaching, with the inspired Word of God. And then he shows us how much he is food or bread for our journey by literally giving us himself as bread, as the Eucharist.
Conclusion
So, Jesus, as the bread of life, moves us to abandon ourselves as the center of everything and to follow him as the guide, the companion, the food and the goal of our journey.
This is how we can experience both strength and real spiritual growth as we continue the journey of human life.
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