22B18. Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8. Knowing that he will die before God’s People enter the Promised Land, Moses gives them the Lord’s Law that will enable them to be a people who will always benefit by being loyal and obedient to the God who is so generous to His People.

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23. Jesus’ followers often were common ordinary folks who did not follow some of the traditions of the Jewish leaders, such as washing their hands before meals. The Pharisees criticized them. Jesus’ response, in turn, was to criticize the Pharisees for making so much of what was human tradition yet not observe God’s Law itself, such as the requirement to honor one’s parents (Mark 7:10-13). While the Law did not speak of washing one’s hand, it did declare some foods to be unclean. Jesus, using his divine authority, did declare that there is no food that makes one unclean but rather that the evil within a person that is an expression of one’s inner self that makes him unclean. The commentary written in the text of Mark 7:19c declares: “Thus he declared all foods clean.” What defiles a person is not the product of which food one eats but rather of the evil one has given himself over to. Jesus is accusing the Pharisees of making much of appearances and little or nothing of what is in one’s heart.

James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27. All goodness that is true goodness has at its roots in God as the giver. Jesus said in Matthew 9:17: “There is only One who is good.” God is good down to his very essence and nothing can cause him to be anything but good. Often God makes us agents of goodness so that we can pass on his goodness to others. “He willed to give us birth by the word of truth that we may be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” God gave us birth into the new life of Christianity “by the word of truth” i.e. the gospel message of his salvation for us. “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.” James is calling upon us who are being loved by Jesus to bring that love to others through our attitude and actions. John says in 1 John 3:18, “Children, let us love not in word or in speech but in deed and truth.” James writes in James 2:17: “So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

James wrote in James 1:27c: “Keep oneself unstained by the world.” Remember in the Gospel that Jesus said, “The things that come out from within are what defile.” The evil ways of this world enter our hearts ungoverned by the God who is goodness. The actions that come from a heart that belongs to God are only goodness. Let us always remember that God is the only true source of genuine goodness.

21B18. Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b. “Joshua gathered together all the tribes of Israel at Shechem, addressing them, “If it does not please you to serve the Lord decide today whom you will serve.” “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Now that the Lord had delivered the Israelites from slavery and settled them down in the Promised Land, it was time for them to decide whom they would serve. Here they clearly decide to submit themselves to the Lord as their master.

John 6:60-69. In demanding of his followers to eat his flesh and drink his blood, without at this point telling them that this is to be done under the appearances of bread and wine, Jesus is commanding them to put their blind trust in him that all would go well. However many refused, saying among themselves, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” “As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.” Up to this point they had put their faith in Jesus because they saw the miracles he had performed. Now however, he wanted them to put their faith in him without seeing outward visible signs but simply believing in him personally. It was to be no longer the miracles that commanded their belief but the person, Jesus. Jesus says, “It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.” He is saying in his own way to believe in him because he God made man in their midst. Peter, apart from those who refuse to submit themselves to the authority of Jesus, says to Jesus, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

Ephesians 5:21-32. Much of the Scriptures reflect the ancient hierarchical culture in which they were written. In this Sunday’s epistle Paul, in telling wives to be subordinate to their husbands, reflects the thinking of the culture of his times. In that same spirit of the times, Paul writes in Ephesians 6:5a, “Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling.” Also Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:5, “But any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled brings shame upon her head, for it is one and the same thing as if she had had her head shaved.” In inspiring the Scriptures, what the Holy Spirit is calling upon us to do is not to replicate the culture of those times but to follow what will lead us to the holiness that God the Father has called us to as his sons and daughters. I believe that the Spirit is calling upon us to be subordinate to God. In our egalitarian society we share with one another the gifts that God has endowed us with and the talents that we have been able to cultivate so to make the family, the community or the Church whole and complete to accomplish its purposes in this world. In 1 Corinthians 12:7 Paul wrote, “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.” What Paul wrote in regard to spiritual gifts is true on all levels of life. We all have been given something by God to make the world he has created a better place for all and give glory to God. In Matthew 25:40 the king, representing God sitting judgment, says, “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” In this Sunday’s epistle Paul writes, “For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. When the body and blood of Christ nourishes us, his own body, the Church becomes holy, giving glory to our God who cherishes us his body with Christ as our head. In receiving the Eucharist, we call upon God to be the source of our daily life so that we may become the saints he has called us to be.

20B18.   Proverbs 9:1-6.  Wisdom “has dressed her meat, mixed her wine, yes, she has spread her table.” Wisdom says, “Come, eat of my food, and drink of the wine I have mixed! Forsake foolishness that you may live; advance in the way of understanding.”  The virtue or way of wisdom is presented as a matron who offers the food that is truth to the human mind so that the human person may direct oneself into proper courses of action and not be lost in worldly folly.

John 6:51-58.   The first sentence here repeats the last sentence from last Sunday’s Gospel.  Then the Jews question, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”  They take him literally because, as yet, he has said nothing of his flesh coming under the appearances of bread.  “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”  “Whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

The custom of participating in the eating of what has been sacrificed to the Lord in the temple is documented in the first seven chapters of Leviticus.  At times the sacrifices are animals; at other times, baked or deep-fried cereal offerings.  Usually the participants are Hebrew priests but with one type of offering Leviticus 7:19c reads, “All who are clean may partake of this flesh.”  What Jesus intents to do is to offer himself on the cross as a once and forever sacrifice, replacing the repetitious offerings of the Old Testament.  When he says,  “Do this in memory of me” (Luke 22:19c), Jesus calls upon our priests to re-present or present over and over again the once-and-for-all sacrifice of his crucifixion on Calvary.  Jesus dies only once but that one sacrifice is offered up over and over again as he commanded us to do.

To eat his flesh and drink his blood means not only to receive Holy Communion but even more to have Jesus as the source of the life that is spiritual and eternal.  Of course we already have natural life as do all animals of the earth but the life Jesus gives us in his flesh and blood is infinitely beyond the natural.  Jesus comes to us under the appearances of ordinary earthly food to remain in us and we in him so to be our ongoing source of God’s life, his personal presence in us and we in him.  In John 14:23, Jesus said, “Whoever loves me will keep my word (do my will), and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”  The divine presence gives us a share in his divine life.  Recall what Jesus said in John 6:27a: “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”  Jesus is calling upon us to reorient our lives around and not around ourselves or the things of this world.

Ephesians 5:15-20.  “Brothers and sisters: Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise,” trying “to understand what is the will of the Lord.” To have God as truly our God means that we must daily submitting ourselves to the One who loves infinitely, who knows all beyond all measure, whose will is based on a foundation that is divinely perfect in every way.  If we do not live in submission then we are saying that we do not accept him as God, just as Lucifer did.  Truly having God as our God means not only to accept the eternal truth in our intellects but even more importantly to rejoice in our hearts, “giving thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father” who cares for us as his beloved children.

19B18. 1 Kings 19:4-8. “Elijah went a day’s journey into the desert,” but could go no further on his own energy, “saying: ‘This is enough, O Lord! Take my life.’” Nonetheless, an angel of the Lord came, providing him with enough food and drink that “he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.”

John 6:41-51. “The Jews murmured about Jesus because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” Since they knew his natural father and mother, seen him grow from birth till now, they thought, “How can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus, because they have seen or heard of the stupendous miracles and things he has done, expects that they realize that he is not just of natural origins. Jesus quotes the prophets, saying, “They shall be taught by God.” Continuing on, Jesus says, “Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.” Listening to the Father requires that we are people of lives of a deep faith that enables us to have the eyes to see and the ears to hear a God who is both invisible and inaudible. Often in the Gospels we read that Jesus went to pray. In his divinity he needed no prayer but in his humanity he needed to nourish himself in conversation with his Father. True prayer requires that we discern how the presence of God communicates with us through the manner in which things unfold in our lives, in what we may read or may hear that others say, in the thoughts and emotions that unfold around us and within us. To be a truly faith filled, spiritual people we can no longer limit ourselves to a visible, audible world. To open ourselves to the spiritual world requires that we be brave and trusting enough to let go of what we know so to land in the hands of caring and loving Lord into what we do not know, can see or hear. In 2 Corinthians 5:6, Paul writes: “So we are always courageous, although we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.” We look beyond a world that we readily grasp and comprehend. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:18, “As we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.” Learning from God the Father requires that we have a mind humble and open to what God wants of us. We let God be truly God over us. That is what it means to believe in God and that belief leads to eternal life. The bread of this life will only get us into the grave but not beyond it. Eating the bread that is Jesus gives us the life that is forever.

Ephesians 4:30-5:2. “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.” The Holy Spirit is always trying to make us saints so that one day we will rejoice in heaven. Do not make the devil dance by being people who not have life of Jesus within us. “Be kind to one another, compassionate.” “So be imitators of God, as beloved children, (made in his image and likeness) as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.” In Matthew 5:48 Jesus says, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

18B18. Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15. “The whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron” that things were better in Egypt where they had plenty to eat than in the desert where they had been led with so little to eat. God hears their grumbling. So he gives the meat of the quail and the residue from the evaporated dew that was the manna to be eaten like bread from the hand of the Lord.

John 6:24-35. This Gospel follows last Sundays’ Gospel where Jesus had fed the five thousand and they sought him out to make him king so that they could get more of that miraculous meal. Jesus says to them, “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” Jesus, answering their question as to what works do they need to do says, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” Still seeking again that miraculous meal they ask Jesus to perform a sign or miracle that they may believe in Jesus just as Moses had given the manna. Jesus replies that it was not Moses but God that gave the manna and that God will again give them the true bread from heaven that gives life to the world. “So they said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” Jesus is telling them that he has given them the bread of this world that gives life for one day as a sign that he, as the one sent by God the Father, is the One who can give them himself who is the bread that gives eternal life. As bread or any food gives us the energy to do our daily work, Jesus, dwelling within us, gives us the strength to live a holy life in a world that tempts us to be a sinful people.

Ephesians 4:17, 20-24. Paul writes, “I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their mind.” Living life without Jesus who is the bread of life is an exercise in futility because it is a choice that leaves one without the light that directs our steps in the way to eternal happiness and without the spiritual energy to make our way through this world’s jungle of temptations. Paul continues, The “truth is in Jesus, that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires,” “and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.” Only with Christ, as the nourishment of our spiritual inner self, the life giving force of our souls can we put away the old self and put on the new. The new self must always be a creation of God to which we assent and actively cooperate.