Sunday

12 Aug 2012

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B Click here for all content for this cycle Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

SUNDAY SUMMARY

1 Kings 19:4-8 Elijah under the broom tree is fed by an angel for the journey ahead.

Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9 Angels stand with those who take refuge in the Lord.

Ephesians 4:30-5:2 Out must go the bad spirits to make way for the Holy Spirit of God.

John 6:41-51 Jesus reveals he is the bread of life, more sustaining than manna in the desert.
The inner word image

The inner word

What’s in your heart?

Elijah was despairing—again. This time it wasn’t only famine and drought. His land and king had gone bad, the prophets who might have pointed things in a better direction were dead, and someone wanted to kill him, and so he decided to lie down under a tree and wait to die. God, however, wouldn’t let him—also again. Twice an angel woke him and fed him, not only to keep him alive but also to prepare him for a long walk to meet his God.

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Exploring the word

God will provide

When undertaking a journey—whether it be a vacation, pilgrimage, relocation, or the life-voyage as a whole—you need to prepare appropriately. Underpacking is perilous. Overpacking is burdensome. Lugging the wrong equipment is frustrating. Every inch and ounce of luggage has to be made to count.

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Homily stories

This saying is hard

Those who “murmur” about Jesus in the gospel couldn’t seem to understand how the human being they were familiar with could claim to have come down from heaven. They could not see past the immediate situation of the human Jesus they knew on earth to the Son of God they could know forever, just as their ancestors who ate the manna God gave them in the desert could not see past their hunger to the God who was not in fact abandoning them, so they grumbled for food.

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Prayers

Penitential Act & Prayer of the Faithful

It is only through Jesus that we know God. We ask forgiveness for the times we have not heeded the Lord’s teaching and followed him.

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Homily themes

Notes on the text

"The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” The epistle and gospel readings pick up where they left off last Sunday, and there are a number of lines of continuity. Last week the Israelites “grumbled” again at Moses and Aaron for letting them starve, while today the people “murmured about Jesus” because he did feed them—but with what was for them the problematic bread from heaven. The gospel this week also continues a shift of emphasis from belief in Jesus’ words to the necessity of eating his flesh, which is the living bread.

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Sign & sacrament

The food of eternal life

On their desert journey the Israelites gathered up and ate the manna that sustained them for their trek to the land of promise. Eventually they did arrive, but also, eventually, they died. Elijah depended on the food and drink that God provided so that he might make it to his destination, the mountain of God. He arrived, yet that prophet also died. John’s gospel, though, emphasizes our hunger for God, as constant and basic as our hunger for food, but also a spiritual hunger that will be satisfied only by our being nourished by the body of Christ.

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Quotes

The holy Eucharist contains the whole spiritual treasure of the church, that is, Christ himself. —Second Vatican Council, Presbyterorum Ordinis (no. 5), 1965

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