Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – August 4, 2024
Do you know where your food comes from? When I was growing up, my grandmother grew a lot of the food we ate. I’d watch her spend hours making each meal and loved her for it. But today, I couldn’t tell you how the pizza delivered to my doorstep came to be.
There is an important aspect in today’s Exodus reading that is different from John’s passage of the feeding of the five thousand, which we read last week and is the prelude to this week’s Gospel pericope. In the miracle of the loaves and fishes, someone had to put in work to turn the earth’s barley into bread.
The Eucharist is memory in the form of food, a gift given freely, not as reward but as relationship with the One who gives it.
But the manna from heaven is a complete and total divine gift—no labor involved. If you read the 15th and 16th chapters of Exodus, you will see that God does not want the Israelites to work for food, only for them to remember who has fed them in their need.
Jesus says to those seeking more bread: “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” The Eucharist is memory in the form of food, a gift given freely, not as reward but as relationship with the One who gives it. Our work then is only to remember who has fed us and respond with faith and love to God’s heavenly gift.
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