'I am the bread of life.' Sunday Reflections, 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

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From The Gospel of John (2003)  Directed by Philip Saville. Jesus played by Henry Ian Cusick; narrator, Christopher Plummer.

Gospel John 6:41-51 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada)

Then the Jews began to complain about Jesus because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Sto Niño Church, Lianga, Surigao del Sur [Photo: Benjie Otagan]

More than twenty years ago when I was parish priest in Lianga in the Diocese of Tandag, which covers the province of Surigao del Sur on the east coast of Mindanao, one of our voluteer catechists came to me on a Saturday afternoon and told me that her father, who was gravely ill, had asked to receive 'the Bread of Life'. I discovered that Mario, as I'll call him, had been married three times, having been widowed twice. 

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