'My father wants the Bread of Life.' Sunday Reflections, 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

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Main Altar
Gil de Siloé [Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel John 6:41-51 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)

So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will 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 he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers 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. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”


Léachtaí i nGaeilge


The Prophet Elijah in the Desert
Dieric Bouts the Elder [Web Gallery of Art]

And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God. (1 Kings 19:7-8, from First Reading).

Santo Niño Church, Lianga, Surigao del Sur, Philippines
Photo by Benjie Otagan

Early in 1994, 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 volunteer 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. 

Continue at Bangor to Bobbio.

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