B Cycle – 18^th Sunday in Ordinary Time 24

Jn. 6:24-35

During the sermon on the mount, Jesus said we are blessed if “we hunger and thirst for righteousness.”  The quest for “righteousness” is desirable because we do seek to be in right standing with God. Yet righteousness seems to be elusive because we never seem to believe we have done enough to attain it.  The acknowledgement of our deficiency in attaining holiness reveals how much we are dependent on ourselves to attain holiness. We do strive to follow God’s command to “be holy as He is holy” (Lev.11:45).  How can we become as holy as God if we fail to understand what it means to be holy. 

Our image of holiness has been formed by the lives of the Saints.  Their faith, their prayer lives, their devotions and sacrifices have become the standard of holiness. Theresa of Availa, John of the Cross, Therese of Lisieux, Francis of Assisi, Mother Theresa, John Paul XXIII show us the virtues of saints.  We are impressed by their lives and yet we overlook how they viewed themselves as sinners.  That admission alone should indicate holiness is an interior quality separate from acknowledging their sin and their need for a savior.       

Jesus is telling us hungering for righteousness is the first step in a quest for holiness.  That hunger is an admission we are far from being holy.  We have depended on the wrong standard to measure our holiness.  That is because we have been dependent on the same standard the Pharisees used.  Jesus said “…their hearts (were) detestable in the sight of God” (Lk.16:15).  Why do we ignore the stories of scripture as we seek to be righteous before God?  For in them we find the measure of holiness is dependence on Christ not on our ability to be holy.  Can it be because we do not want to look at the sinfulness that resides in each of us?  We are ignoring our need to constantly rely on something other than ourselves to become holy – Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. 

In the Old Testament reading today, God shows us what His provident care looks like. God gave the Israelites Mana, a heavenly food to sustain them.  However, Mana became ordinary, so they complained because it became unremarkable.  It seems that no matter what God did they grumbled.  We have become like them because we are unable to see what God has provided us to become righteous.  Our spiritual lives have become routine, predictable, and yes perhaps even unremarkable.  A friend once told me, “…if he believed what we Catholics believed about the Eucharist, he would on his knees every day seeking it.”  Do we hunger and thirst for union with Christ or are we stuck in a routine without any notion of what God desires to do within us?  It is not a quest we are on because that implies, we need to be constantly searching.  We are not on a journey! A journey implies we are striving for a destination -heaven – not a union with Christ.  We are unwilling to acknowledge we are powerless to achieve holiness on our own. 

Jessu speaking to the woman at the well tells us plainly what we are hungering and thirsting for is something only he can provide. “…the water that I will give will become…a well of water springing up to eternal life” (Jn. 4;14).  He also said “…out of Him will flow “living water” (Jn.7:38), adding that this living water is the Holy Spirit whom He would send.    

What we need for holiness is what God has provided for us just as He provided for the Israelites.  Our Mana is the Bread from Heaven and the Holy Spirit who will transform us from “glory to glory into the image of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 3:18).  We must desire it and say as that woman at the well said, “give it to me.”  Each Sunday we celebrate and are reminded, “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will not have life within you” (Jn. 6:35).  We do not symbolically eat His flesh; we literally eat and drink the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.  We are reminded by the words of Jesus how hard that is to comprehend. Scripture records these words spoken by many of his followers – “this teaching is hard to take how can anyone believe it” (Jn. 6:60) and they left Him.

Dail, Jesus, and the Spirit are present to us.  It is their action within us that stirs up a hunger and a thirst for more of their presence in our lives.  Creating a deeper need to have them guide our growth in holiness.  It is because of their action within us that we can become attuned to God speaking to our hearts, calling us to experience holiness and a total dependence on Christ and the Spirit for our holiness. 

It is by their action within us that we are aware of the great gift of salvation and how we are empowered by their desire to change our hearts.  They create within us a dependence on the promise of God to make us holy.  We begin to understand God was not telling us to be holy.  Instead, He was telling us “…we shall be holy” by His gift of Jesus Christ. 

We like the saints; will know we are sinners hungering for the touch of God. Our mission is not to bask in the glory of God. It is to become disciples willing to go out and spread the good news of salvation to those who are hungering and thirsting for meaning and purpose in their lives.