The readings today make it clear that God nourishes and sustains us, but the food God gives us is to strengthen us to do God’s work. The more we take and eat of the bread of life, the deeper we are drawn into Christ’s life and to his way of life: that of caring, serving, forgiving, trusting, and, most of all, loving.

Does everybody feel this way, or is it just me? I am strongly attracted to the scene involving Elijah under the broom tree. Maybe because I’ve been under the broom tree plenty of times myself. “This is enough, O Lord! Take my life. Please.” I feel partly like a stand-up comic delivering the classic joke, but I’m very sincere as I speak my lines.

At this, because he said, “I am the Bread that came down from heaven,” the Jews started arguing over him: “Isn’t this the son of Joseph? Don’t we know his father? Don’t we know his mother? How can he now say, ‘I came down out of heaven’ and expect anyone to believe him?”

I received a phone call recently from a man I’ve never met who goes to my church. Someone—he couldn’t remember who—gave him my name and number because they thought I might be interested in committing to one hour a week to adore the Eucharist in our Perpetual Adoration chapel.

So much of the world subsists on a particular starch—like rice or pasta or potatoes—as a basis of its food intake, and the same food is prepared and eaten in the same way day after day. But in our land of incredible bounty, we insist on variety.

We were taking the sites of midtown Manhattan, chomping on hot pretzels, when a haggard, down-on-her luck woman walked up to my sister and cried, “Help me, please. I’m hungry.” Without hesitation, my sister handed the woman her pretzel.

I’m sure I was being overdramatic. I was a teenager, after all, and the ups and downs of a teenager’s life feel very dramatic, indeed. I had been volunteering my summer to work at a camp for orphans. It was more demanding than I expected.

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.

Love is fully sufficient to itself, when it enters the heart, it absorbs all other feelings. The soul who loves, loves and knows nothing more. To God alone, honor and glory. But God accepts these only when seasoned with the honey of love.