Seeds:

First Reading: Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15

• This famous passage retells the provision the Lord made for the journeying Israelites following their complaint at losing the bounty of Egypt. It must be remembered that Egypt was the superpower of its day with riches and abundance far beyond its neighbours. Even though the Israelites were enslaved, they still shared in the fruits of that bounty in some ways. Being in the desert, by comparison, was a difficult experience of lack.
• Nevertheless, God responded to the requests of his people, however inelegantly expressed, and provided manna to sustain them.
• Notice that we’re told God would provide bread from heaven but, when he does, the people are confused. Rather than looking like bread, the manna is described as a “thing delicate, powdery, as fine as hoarfrost”. Does this set a precedent for how God breaks expectations and expands horizons? What can we learn from this for our experience of the Eucharist?

Psalm: Psalm 77(78):3-4,23-25,54

• The psalm refers to the provision of manna as a manifestation of the glory of the Lord, his might, and his marvellous deeds: we’ve already seen how confused the Israelites were at the powdery manna, how might this redefine the way we see God’s glory? You might like to think particularly in terms of the incarnation of Jesus and how he is hidden from sight in the Eucharist.
• The psalm poetically refers to the manna as the “bread of angels” – how might we understand this?

Second Reading: Ephesians 4:17,20-24

• Paul draws a distinction here between a person’s old life and their new life in Christ; how do you understand that in your own life and experience?
• A renewal of our minds by a spiritual revolution is called for. Paul gives us a sketch of what this could look like in terms of giving up our old way of life and its corruptions and illusory desires. A spiritual revolution, then, should lead to a new way of life that avoids corruption and sees the world with clarity. How might we experience that?

Gospel: John 6:24-35

• John’s gospel can sometimes be difficult to follow, in terms of sequence of events or logic. Sometimes John will twist or turn the narrative in ways that surprise us, as he does here. The question the people pose to Jesus – ‘when did you come here?’ – seems oddly out of place. Why might they ask that question?
• Jesus said: “you are not looking for me because you have seen the signs but because you had all the bread you wanted to eat”. Ponder this passage, what does it tell us about the nature and purpose of Jesus’ ‘signs’?
• There is a tight interplay in the passage between concepts of belief, nourishment, and signs. Follow the thread of each word through the passage and try to see how those threads connect and expand one another.
• We read this passage as speaking quite directly about the Eucharist: re-read the passage through that lens and pause at each phrase, what does it reveal about the Eucharist?

Sapling:

I was planning to spend the next few weeks reflecting on the beautiful discourse in John 6. But the second reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians hit me like an electric shock. I think we all need that kind of electrifying moment from time to time.

Paul puts us on notice right from the first line: “I want to urge you in the name of the Lord”.

Pause for a moment to let that sink in. Paul wants to urge us – you and me – in the name of God himself. This is a deeply serious thing for a person to say. Remember, Paul was a very well-read Pharisee, who knew his Old Testament back to front. He this line from Deuteronomy: “the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’” (Deuteuronomy 18:20, ESV).

Prophecy, in the biblical sense, is less about looking into the future, but more about speaking the words of God. Paul, then, lets us know that what he’s about to say carries the weight of a capital punishment under the Mosaic Law, if he isn’t in fact speaking in the name of the Lord.

Here’s the message Paul wanted to deliver: do not “go on living the aimless kind of life that pagans live.”

A person who becomes a Christian or who starts living the life of discipleship with intentionality should experience a change in their life. This is a constant teaching of Paul, as also of the whole New Testament, and I think it’s something that we all need to ponder today.

Does your life look different, as a follower of Christ, from the lives of everyone else around you?

Paul defines what that change is about: it’s about direction.

One of my favourite quotes from the late Pope Benedict XVI, which I come back to again and again, is at the beginning of his encyclical Deus Caritas Est: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”

Pope Benedict understood what Paul is getting at here in Ephesians: Christ causes us to change direction, decisively.

In what way can we say that the lives of “pagans” (in Paul’s context he meant all those who weren’t Christian) are aimless? At the most basic level, it’s because without the hope of eternal life with God that Christ offers us in the gospel, what ultimately is there to aim for?

People go to work to make money to pay their mortgage, then go back to work to get more money to pay their mortgage, again and again. Until, eventually, we die, and that house gets sold to someone else.

Christian life is supposed to be different – it has a focus and a goal by having encountered the Jesus who beckons us to follow him where he has gone before.

Paul is very blunt with us: “you must give up your old way of life.” Not that we should think about it, or perhaps see it as a good idea in the future: we must do it now.

Is he telling us to give up our jobs? For some people, he might be – that’s how people end up as missionaries or enter monasteries or convents. We shouldn’t disparage that or presume that God doesn’t call people in that way anymore.

But for others, God isn’t calling on us to give up our old lives in that way. He is calling on all of us to consider the direction and the goal of our lives. It needs to be laser focused on Christ!

What if we don’t feel that, though? What if we find ourselves going through the motions; turning up at Mass out of habit and not feeling much of a connection to what’s going on, our minds drifting to the film we saw the night before or the emails we need to reply to.

Again, Paul seeks to wake us up, reminding us that there is a danger if we “failed to hear him [Christ] properly”.

Let’s not have that be true of us, rather let’s undergo the “spiritual revolution” Paul calls for. It begins in prayer and repentance (which means seeking that decisive new direction in our life). The Lord promised to reveal himself to those who earnestly seek his face. It might not be easy, or comfortable, but the rewards are well worth it.

Fruit:

• Catholic Social teaching reflects on the way we live out our faith in the context of concrete lives in the world. It can sketch the shape of a life transformed by a spiritual revolution for us. You could look at the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, or at individual documents such as Laudato Si’, Rerum Novarum, etc.

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