We continue our journey this weekend through what’s called the “Bread of Life Discourse,” that essential part of the Gospel of John that presents us with the Lord’s fundamental teachings about the Holy Eucharist.  The Lord returns to that same controversial description of himself that he’s already used before, saying once again “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” 

First of all, because we hear these passages and these phrases so often, it’s important to remember what a strange and surprising thing to say this is.  Imagine if you go to work on Monday, and you’re making small-talk with some coworkers and you ask one of them, “How are you?” and he responds, “I am the living bread.”  You’d probably lean over to the other guy and say, “Is he all right?”  “Are you feeling okay?”  It seems funny, but that’s exactly what happened with the bystanders in the Gospel.  They were murmuring.  Whispering and conferring with each other: “‘I came down from heaven’?  Isn’t this Joe and Mary’s kid?  What is he talking about?  Come down from heaven…”?  My point in digging into this is to say, let yourself be surprised by this.  It’s one of those many little phrases in our Faith-Vocabulary (and there are so many, I talk about this all the time): one of those things that we say and hear so often, that we forget just how shocking and counter-intuitive it really is.  “I am the living bread come down from heaven.”  It’s a remarkable thing for a person to say.  And, if it weren’t true, it would absolutely, pathologically insane.  But it is true.  And it’s one of those truths that God had been preparing the world for, for millennia, to be ready to hear and to accept. 

One of the reasons the Church almost always gives us an Old Testament reading at Sunday Mass, is that God does the same thing for us over the course of this hour, the same journey that he took the entire world on, over the course of centuries.  He prepares us, he gets us used to certain ideas, he engages our imagination with certain images, just like he did with the Chosen People of the Old Covenant: and then, here at Mass just like in salvation history as a whole, everything is fulfilled in Christ.  The Gospel reading at Mass, a reading which is always about the life of Christ directly, brings that preparation process to its conclusion and propels us into the second half of Mass when we actually have a direct, personal encounter with him in the Most Holy Eucharist.  We experience all of salvation history in a microcosm in 45 minutes, right here.  It’s incredible.  And today’s readings really bring that process out more directly than usual.  The Old Testament reading gives us these vivid, sort of pre-Eucharistic images.  Elijah was so exhausted by his long difficult flight that he’s at the point of giving up: “Take my life,” he says to God, “because I am no better than my fathers.”  He falls asleep, probably hoping to succumb to hunger and thirst and just not wake up again.  But God’s angel commands him to “Get up, and eat, because you still have a long journey ahead of you,” and the food he needs is provided for him.  And Elijah did just that, walking forty days and forty nights, nourished by the food God had provided, until he reached his destination, the Mountain of God. 

This is a direct example of what we were talking about: this story prepares us, gets us used to certain ideas, engages our imagination with certain images, so that we are more receptive, even without necessarily realizing it, to have the exact same thing happen to us.  The holy mountain, Elijah’s destination, represents heaven, that we are all struggling to reach.  The forty days of travel represent our journey through life, which we can continue to make, even when we are weary and fatigued by life, because God gives us the nourishment we need, because he tells us to get up and keep walking and he gives us the nourishment that will get us there.  He is that Bread for our journey through life.  More specifically, his flesh is that Bread for the life of the world.  And his promise is, whoever eats this Flesh and drinks this Blood, will live forever.  So, his surprising, confusing, very strange statement: I am the bread come down from heaven: turns out it’s the most reasonable, sensible, historically apt, and relevant thing that’s ever been said.  It’s our salvation, right there.  We just have to get up, keep walking, and accept the nourishment that Our Savior gives us for the journey, his own Body and Blood, the Bread of Life come down from heaven.  And receiving that Bread that we need, the Bread that sustains us, we keep going on our journey to heaven, we worship, and we rejoice.