The True Bread (The Fourth Sunday of Lent)

Today, dear friends, I just wanted to offer you a quick moment of reflection, as the sun sinks below the horizon and as the cool night air blows off the Atlantic, bringing with it the sounds of ocean with it.

We are so often hungering after the right thing. I don't know if we acknowledge that enough, that we are hungry for good things, for worthy things. We long for beautiful and search high and low for good. We sense, innately and instinctively, that there is something about symphonies that is beautiful and something about watching wild geese fly over the field that is good.

We are hungry creatures. So why don't we ever feel full? Why are we hungering and thirsting, and never being filled?

I think we are hungry for the right thing, but I don't think we always eat the right food. The Israelites were hungry for provision, but they didn't want to eat manna. The disciples and the people said, "Lord, always give us this bread," but when Jesus said it was Himself, they grumbled and left. And so we too, who look at the manna we are offered, who look at the true Bread lifted high to save us, and we grumble, and go away hungry.

Alexander Schmemann says, "All that exists is God's gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man's life communion with God. It is divine love made food, made life for man. God blesses everything He creates, and, in biblical language, this means that He makes all creation the sign and means of His presence and wisdom, love and revelation: 'O taste and see that the Lord is good.'" - For the Life of the World


Imagine if we let our hunger be filled by the true bread! Imagine with me, if we took our true and good hunger, hunger for the beautiful and the worthy and the real, and offered it up to God to be filled with Himself, with the goodness He blesses around us, with manna sent daily from heaven?

Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” (John 6.32,33)

(photo by mandie sodoma)

Love,
Hilary