By Fr. Antony Christy, SDB –
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 5th August, 2018
Exo 16: 2-4,12-15; Eph 4: 17, 20-24; Jn 6: 24-35
O Christian, realise your dignity: those words of Pope St. Leo the Great is something that pulls up our attention constantly towards living a life that is worthy of the splendour we are invested with. This Sunday’s Word brings this back strongly to our minds. We need to remember we are not any kind of beings. Even among the so-called human beings, we have received and we claim to have accepted a revelation, very special and precious. And hence we need to remember that we are people bred for heaven!
The Word reminds us that we are different and we need to make a difference. We need to feel the presence of the Lord who makes a difference for us! We need to start living that difference in our life, on a daily basis, by showing to the world that our value systems are different, that our priorities are different and that our foundation is different.
We have an obligation to make a difference, wherever we are! Because we are bred for heaven! Our home is heaven, our origin is God and our destiny is eternal life! We are fed by the bread from heaven and we are bred for heaven!
We cannot get lost in the world, in the crowd, in the so called normalcy of life. We are warned against three things in which we can possibly get lost:
Do not get lost in things that do not last
The world seems to be running crazy behind things that cannot last – possessions and pleasure are ranked the highest in the list of priorities in life today. The sad fact is, after all the running and an eventual achievement there is a disillusionment that follows almost immediately! We lose everything to reach where we cannot stay forever, to achieve things that would not remain with us forever, to have a feeling which would not follow us forever. Jesus gets seemingly upset with the people because they were attaching a disproportionate importance to the gross benefits of following Jesus, losing the actual and the ideal good that Jesus was proposing to them, a different way of life! The only thing that lasts, the Lord says today, is the life that God alone can give, the eternal life.
Do no get lost with the ways of the crowd
Do not go on living an aimless kind of life, St. Paul insists in his letter to the Ephesians! Live as people who have seen the Way, the Truth and the Life. See that difference, make that difference and live that difference. Let the world turn around and look at you, don’t be following the crowd. Do no conform to the ways of the world (Rom 12:2), Paul would say elsewhere. Be singled out, by your way of life! Be noticed, by your priorities. Be imitable, by the priceless model that you have, Jesus the Lord. Be imitators of me as I am of Christ, said Paul.
Do not get lost being carried away by the apparent
Do not go by the external show and the make-belief practices. Do not be carried away by what appears and what is projected – they can mislead you. The people thought Moses gave them the bread from heaven. Jesus had to teach them, it was not Moses but the Father in heaven who gave them the bread and that the same bread had come down in flesh and blood amidst them. They could not see it, because they were fixated with the apparent, with the external, with the outward show. They could not delve deeper and get their faith right. Today we have come a long way, we have seen the revelation of God, the experience of God, the majesty of God…and we cannot get lost in the apparent.
We are not meant for the passing things and temporal benefits… yes, they are necessary but there is life over and beyond them all. We are truly made for God! We are bred for heaven! Let us never lose sight of it and never stop marching towards it!
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him on.