Today the Lord invites us to consider, and even to receive from, the ever-abundant goodness that is the Eucharist. Indeed scripture teaches us to recognize, and to receive with gratitude and recognition, the goodness of God toward us in every situation and in all the times of our lives. In reflecting on the goodness of God through the gift of the Eucharist we also consider the greater sense of how God meets our needs daily in a superabundant fashion.
For most of us we frequently pray, as the Lord taught us, give us this day our daily bread. As I was considering these words it occurred to me that we often tend to say them without giving much consideration to their meaning. All my life I thought of our "daily bread" as that which we need to survive and nothing more. After all, "daily bread" does sound sort of minimalistic.
Although the Our Father, or The Lord's Prayer, isn't a part of today's readings, there is something about the prayer for daily bread that connects to them. Because meaning tends get lost in translation, most of us may not realize that in praying for our daily bread the Lord was teaching us to pray not only for basic subsistence but for that which satisfies all the needs of our lives—through and through—with something left over besides. The original language says give us this day our supersubstantial bread.
The first reading from Isaiah points us to the satisfying goodness of God that is ours without cost. The lesson shows us that receiving from the goodness and grace of God has always been an intricate part of being in relation to God. If we have an idea or image of God that is something other than God's loving and giving freely to satisfy our deepest needs, then perhaps it's time to reconsider what we know about God—perhaps it's time to unveil something new and refreshing.
The call "come to the water" summons us to partake freely in the refreshing reality of the God who makes all things new. Again the message of grace, unmerited, free favor, is clear—that God gives to us all we need, and that we only have to ask. The call to come to the water also reminds us of Christian baptism, the sacrament that opens the door for us to the Eucharistic abundance of life in Christ.
Whenever I have the opportunity to preside at baptisms I like to remind parents and godparents that Jesus told us to become like little children if we desire to enter into the blessed live of heaven. Indeed what he asks us is to recognize that our Father in heaven provides everything for us. We are to look to God as the source of all that we have and need in the same way that small children look to the adults in their lives as their total providers. This too is what it means to live a Eucharistic life.
What we receive from God—the richness and depth of the spiritual life as well as being provided with our material needs—is nothing other than the pouring out of God's love for humanity. Thus Eucharist is the true sign of the love that God is. It is the love, as St. Paul tells us, that conquers everything, and it is the love that God manifests in us through Jesus. It is the love in which we may rest with assurance, knowing that no power is great enough to separate us from it. To live in love, that is to have our very being situated within love, is Eucharist. With unsurpassable gratitude we recognize the gift of God in life all around us.
Over the years we have revisited, time and again, the miracle of the loaves and fishes. We have also considered the possibility and the importance of the multitude sharing with one another from what they had already. I have never believed that Jesus had to break any of the laws of nature to make the miracle of the loaves—or any other miracle—happen, but I do believe that it is a great sign of God's supernatural power and of his intervention into human affairs. Undeniably the feeding of the multitude is a sign of the superabundant love and grace that God gives us. Interestingly, the gospel tells us that there were twelve baskets left over, and this too points to the fact that God gives us more than we need as a matter of course. He gives us our supersubstantial daily bread.
The challenge for us is to connect completely with the Eucharistic lifestyle—to be living vessels of grace and signs of God's love in the world today. As tough as it may seem sometimes, it's not impossible. Really, it's about faith: believing in something is the first step to receiving it. Human beings typically ask for evidence to believe. The evidence, the sign of truth, is in our living a Eucharistic life—our witness to the world. Yes that means providing for others, being there in times of need for others, living, being, and doing all that loving implies. However, it also means being willing to be the recipient of God's goodness.
We might say to ourselves, "Today I'm going to receive Eucharist…I'm going to admit my need for God…I am going to acknowledge that everything I have is God's gift to me…I'm going to receive grace…I'm going to admit that I am forgiven and I'm going to forgive others…Today I'm going to receive love and I'm going to love others…Today I'm going to yield to God and be satisfied with much more than I simply need."
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