Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time. Year B.

An Irish journalist who had stopped going to Mass started going again simply because she bringing her elderly parents who had asked her to do so. She shared how “the last thing I expected was that I'd actually enjoy going. This will sound barking mad, but it quickly became a highlight of my week. I feel connected and supported and that's how I feel every week”.

The Mass is a great gift that we can become almost too used us. It is good for us to let ourselves be amazed at the gift of the Eucharist. The Mass can satisfy our deepest hungers in ways we can never fully realise. In the Elijah story told to us in the First reading, we heard of God caring for this prophet who had become discouraged and tired and fed up with life. God provided him with food for the journey. The famous Jesuit and scientist Teilhard de Chardin reminded us that “We are all spiritual beings on a human journey”. We can all have moments of being discouraged, tired and fed up. We all need support and sustenance as we face daily challenges as well as coping with our own weakness and shortcomings. We need spiritual food to give us energy. As another Jesuit writer that Pope Francis quoted last week in a letter he wrote on the place of literature in our Christian life, we need food to nourish the “stomach of the soul”.

In today’s reading we hear Jesus explain how he is the Bread of Life come down from heaven precisely to strengthen us and feed the stomach of the soul. And he adds, “Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” The Mass is the moment when we meet Jesus who is giving his life for us. He is offering us eternal life, that is, the love the flows from the heart of God the Father. No one in this world, as much they might love another person, can make themselves become food for them. God did so, and he continues to do so, for us in Jesus. Jesus is the true “bread of life” who provides us with the spiritual food that can satisfy our profound hunger. The people around Jesus that day two thousand years ago that we’ve just read about in the Gospel couldn’t believe that he was actually God coming to help them. They missed out on what he could offer them.

Last week one of the priests of the diocese, Fr. Frank O’Connor, died. A wonderful priest. He had motor neuron disease that robbed him of his speech and movements. But he was lucid right up to near the end. Just the day before he died, it was arranged for some priest colleagues and family members to celebrate Mass with him. They placed the stole on him and at the consecration, he managed to raise his two hands in the gesture of concelebration. It was a moving moment for everyone.

He believed Jesus was the bread of life and that he would encounter that Jesus when the moment of death would come, welcoming him home into the eternal life of heaven. But just like Jesus, in his suffering, I’m sure Fr. Frank wanted to “give his life”, offering his suffering, saying his Mass, not just the Mass celebrated in liturgy but the everyday Mass he was being asked to say, bearing his terrible illness with equanimity and courage.

It is good for us to come to Mass to be strengthened with the bread come down from heaven – that is the Word of God, the Eucharist –. We can then go out again to carry that Cross each of us has in our own way, that suffering we have to bear, that silent tear we shed. Each of us can say our Mass too.