20th Sunday in Ordinary Time  B  (18 August 2024)

1. Like last Sunday, also today St Paul, in the second reading, addresses some recommendations to the Ephesians, which we can summarise in four points: "do not live like fools, but be wise"; "make good use of the time because our days are evil"; "do not get drunk with wine that makes you lose control of yourself, but be filled with the Spirit"; "give thanks continually for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ". To live as fools or as wise is the challenge for every human being. The effort of those who want to follow Jesus is to feed on his wisdom, which is presented as a path, a way of conceiving life and behaving not in the manner of this world but according to the vocation of children of light, immersed in divine love. We are going through, St Paul observes, not easy times among people who easily become selfish, enemies of good and lovers of pleasures rather than devoting themselves to seeking the joy of God (cf. 2 Tim 3:1-7). True wisdom consists in accepting God's will every day, filling oneself not with wine that gets drunk, that is, with that which dulls the conscience and weakens the will, but with the Holy Spirit that enables one to live in praise, adoration and thanksgiving. Thanks to the action of the Holy Spirit, all human existence is converted into a true liturgy because it is he who introduces us into the wisdom of Christ, the One who gives life so that the world may have life.

2. St Paul's reference to divine wisdom, and this wisdom is also spoken of in the first reading from the book of Proverbs, prepares us to meditate on today's page of John's gospel, which continues the account of the catechesis on the Eucharist that Jesus gave in the synagogue of Capernaum. Today he resumes with this statement: "The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world (v.51). Jesus is not talking about a cannibal, about anthropophagy; and his listeners are not surprised because they remotely suspect that this is absurd language. In the Jewish world, people were accustomed to using the metaphor of eating and drinking, and they knew that there are hunger and thirsts more urgent and demanding than those of the stomach. There are men who can fill their stomachs at will, but suffer from a lack of love, in the same way the human heart far from God ends up dying of spiritual starvation. Wisdom for the people of Israel is always a choice: between life or death, between good or evil, between joy or mortal sadness, between God or man.  God alone, knowing this, can give man true wisdom that does not disappoint.  In the book of Genesis, the account of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and of Adam and Eve's sin is a metaphor to say that the knowledge of what makes man truly free and happy or enslaved and unhappy is accessible only to God and man alone with his intelligence/will can never construct it (Genesis 2: 8 - 3: 24). Man then has no choice but to listen obediently to God, who wanted to give wisdom as a gift to his people, and Israel is proud to be the repository of divine wisdom before the whole world. Again in the first reading from the book of Proverbs, it is said that divine wisdom has pitched her tent on the holy mountain in Jerusalem and "she has built her house, she has carved her seven pillars. He has killed his cattle, prepared his wine and set his table, and sent his handmaidens to proclaim to the unlearned and the senseless: 'come and eat bread and drink wine that I have prepared for you'. One does not struggle to understand the connection between the gift of Wisdom and the gift of the Eucharist, everything and always in the logic of the gift.

3. The listeners in Capernaum were familiar with these Old Testament texts and were therefore astonished when Jesus spoke of himself as the bread of life and asked themselves: but for whom does this man whom we know so well take himself? They understood that Jesus was presenting himself as the Messiah they were waiting for and this was unacceptable to them. In his discourse, Jesus repeatedly insisted that he was God's Envoy to give life to the world, facing incomprehension, critical murmuring and often decisive rejection from his listeners. A rejection of his identity that Saint John already affirms in the prologue of his gospel, when he writes that the Word "came among his own and his own did not receive him" (John 1:11).  Indeed, few are able to enter gradually into the mystery of God and it is those who humbly listen to Jesus to the end instead of immediately beginning to argue. This is also true for us: only wrapped in divine wisdom that is foolishness for men can we approach the mystery. Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew among Jews, spoke in the language of the time, used the same images and symbols. Those who listened to him could understand him at least for the fact that he was using the same vocabulary and shared the same way of reasoning. Instead, the majority decided not to follow him and this happened at many points in his life.  Since there is no account in the Fourth Gospel, as there is in the Synoptics, of the institution of the Eucharist on Holy Thursday after the Last Supper, this discourse constitutes a first major catechesis on the Eucharistic mystery. When John writes the gospel, the first Christian communities had already been accustomed for several years to feed on the body and blood of Christ every Sunday and were trying to understand this mystery. But more than trying to understand - Jesus says - it is necessary with humility to let oneself be infected by the mystery.  In the heart of the Eucharistic prayer even the celebrant proclaims it: this is the 'Mystery of Faith'. To enter into the mystery of the Eucharist is beyond our capacity, and so it is necessary to allow ourselves to be enlightened and led by God. And Jesus further explains: "As the Father who lives has sent me and I live for the Father, so also he who eats me will live for me". Living his own life: this is God's gift to mankind in the Eucharist. Jesus had proclaimed that his word is nourishment for the world, but here he goes much further, he speaks of flesh to be eaten that becomes food to be assimilated not only for ourselves but for the good of humanity: "The bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world". It refers to his passion and death and resurrection as the entire New Testament makes us realise that the world has found life again thanks to the gift of Christ's glorious cross, that is, victorious over death. Let us not be surprised if we struggle to understand with our intelligence because the only way forward is not to try to understand, but to allow ourselves to be drawn by God. To those who murmured among themselves when Jesus had said that he was the bread that came down from heaven, Jesus had replied: "It is written in the prophets: And all shall be taught of God. So everything is difficult for man if God himself does not come to instruct us. When we listen to the teachings of the Father we meet Jesus because 'no one comes to me', he insists, 'unless my Father draws him'. In the Eucharist we are drawn: it is the Most Holy Trinity who divinely draws us to himself. Yes, in the Eucharistic celebration, we enter into the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. Before, during and after we remain in adoration, allowing ourselves to be instructed and transformed by God Most Holy Trinity and Infinite Mercy. This is the example of the saints, who draw from immersion in the mystery of the Holy Trinity the strength to love all in truth. And this is a gift offered to all. During his short life, Charles Acutis, a teenager already blessed and soon to be proclaimed a saint lived on the Eucharist. He said: "The Eucharist is my highway to Paradise", and "if we stand before the sun, we become brown, but when we stand before Jesus in the Eucharist, we become holy".

+Giovanni D'Ercole

Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary (15 August 2024)

1. In the heart of summer, the liturgy invites us to celebrate the Virgin Mary assumed into heaven, a sign of consolation and sure hope for all. It was Pope Pius XII, on 1 November in the Holy Year of 1950, who declared as dogma (i.e. truth of faith) the Assumption of Mary to heavenly glory in body and soul. Today's Gospel of Luke presents Mary as the one who is blessed because she believed. To Elizabeth's greeting, "To what do I owe that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" she responds with her silence, which eventually expands into the singing of the Magnificat.  In her place, Jesus in gestation within her speaks mysteriously, causing John the Baptist to leap for joy in the womb of the elderly Elizabeth. Here is Mary, the Ark of the new covenant, the first itinerant tabernacle of the Eucharist in the history of humanity, a model of evangelisation: proclaiming the gospel without the need for words, carrying Christ in one's heart. Among Muslims, Saint Charles de Foucauld chose the icon of the Visitation as a reference for his mission as a little brother to all. He wanted to be like Mary in constant adoration of the Eucharist and listening to the needs of the people first at Beni-Abbès, on the border between Algeria and Morocco, and then at Tamanrasset among the Tuaregs of the Sahara desert. The Ark of the new covenant, Mary continues to walk today and enters our homes as the Ark of the covenant did in the Old Testament when it was taken from Jerusalem to the hills of Judea and entered the house of Obed Edom for three months, bringing joy there (2 S 6:11-12). The prayer, the Magnificat canticle with which she responds to Elizabeth, is a sylloge of many small fragments of biblical texts and psalms. She did not want to invent her own prayer, but took up various expressions of her ancestors in faith, thus embodying her prayer in the life of humanity. Mary, a humble and believing woman, offers us a valuable lesson: in this very difficult time for humanity where God is being provoked with every offence and a war is being risked that could create the self-destruction of humanity, we must go back to silencing so much controversy and so many debates and clashes. We must take responsibility for what we say and do, knowing that we are part of the same humanity and for better or for worse we touch the lives of all. The believer cannot forget that every vocation, even in the plurality of differences, makes us servants of the one people called to face a hard fight against the powers of evil in every age.   

2. This war without frontlines is referred to in the first reading, taken from the book of Revelation, which sees as the victor the "Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars", accompanied by other symbolic images: the Ark of the covenant, the dragon and the newborn child.  The Ark of the Covenant, as already mentioned, is a reference to the golden wooden Ark that accompanied God's people during the exodus to Sinai. When John writes the Revelation, the Ark of the Covenant had already been lost for many years during the Babylonian exile and everyone thought that the prophet Jeremiah had hidden it in a secret place on Mount Nebo (2 M 2:8) and it would reappear at the arrival of the Messiah. If John describes her as having been found, it means that the promise has now been fulfilled, God's covenant with humanity has been definitively realised through the birth of the Messiah (Rev 11:19). The "Woman clothed with the sun" is pregnant and "cries out in labour pains". The Woman is the image of the chosen people within which the Messiah is born, a painful birth because it is a people marked by suffering, divisions and persecutions. With the advent of Jesus, it was not difficult for the first Christians to associate in the Woman of the Apocalypse the call to the Church, new Israel, and to Mary, the Mother of the Saviour. Before the Woman stands "a red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and on its heads seven diadems" to devour her newborn son, a striking symbol of the forces of evil unleashed against God's plan.  Its head and horns indicate the intelligence and violence of Satan's power to destroy humanity. The dragon seems to prevail because it shoots down a third of the stars in the sky to plunge them to earth, an eloquent parable of the travails of a universe never at peace. Despite its power, however, it succeeds in knocking down only a third of the stars. It is therefore an illusory victory and the message is clear: the power of evil is provisional and it will be the newborn child destined to rule all nations that will bring it down for good. Everyone recognises in this newborn child, triumphant over the satanic powers, the Messiah since there are clear references in Revelation to the psalms that foresaw his coming: "The Lord has said to me: You are my son, I have begotten you today. Ask me and I will give thee the nations as an inheritance, and in thy dominion the far-off lands. You shall break them with scepter of iron, like pots of clay you shall shatter them." (Ps 2:7-9).  Moreover, in the rapture of the newborn child is symbolised the resurrection of the risen Christ, victor over death and seated at the right hand of the Father. The Messiah is joined by the reference to Mary, the Immaculate Virgin Mother, always represented in the act of crushing the head of the serpent-dragon, who having failed in heaven will not succeed on earth either. How then can one fail to love Mary by entering into her Immaculate Heart, the "safe refuge of souls"?

3. Mary is the support of our hope because she is the Woman of faith who accepted God's plan without fully understanding, indeed a sword pierced her soul as old Simeon had foretold (Lk 2:35). The tradition of the Church from the beginning has inseparably associated her with Jesus, the unsurpassable model of total adherence to God's will. Indeed, he himself teaches us with the prayer of the 'Our Father' to abandon ourselves fearlessly into the arms of the heavenly Father, saying with our lives: 'Thy will be done'. Mary, like all of us, knew toil, pain and death; by a special privilege, however, death was for her a falling asleep, thus entering into glory in God. By contemplating her we can understand what awaited mankind if our forefathers had not committed the first sin that condemned us to the sufferings of death. In the light of Mary we can therefore affirm two truths: Our body, because of original sin, is subject to the labours, suffering and death that decompose our mortal being. Mary assumed into heaven assures us, however, that if death has entered because of sin, God can transform it and give us back immortal life as a gift. This is the message of today's Feast of the Assumption, an occasion to reflect, pray and trust in God's mercy that in Mary shows us the victory of love over hate and of life over death. Let us pause to contemplate Mary with this prayer of St Bernard: "Whoever you are, you who feel that in the flux of this world you are swaying between gales and storms instead of walking securely on the earth, do not avert your eyes from the splendour of this star, if you do not want to be overwhelmed by storms! If the winds of temptation rise, if you come upon the rocks of tribulation, look to the star, call upon Mary. If you are buffeted by the waves of pride, ambition, slander, jealousy, look to the star, call upon Mary. If wrath or avarice or the lure of the flesh have shaken the ship of your soul, look to Mary. If troubled by the enormity of sins, confused by the unworthiness of conscience, frightened by the horror of judgement, you begin to be engulfed in the abyss of sadness, in the abyss of despair, think of Mary. In dangers, in anxieties, in uncertainties, think of Mary, invoke Mary. Do not turn away from your mouth, do not turn away from your heart. And to obtain the suffrage of her prayer, do not abandon the example of her life gathered in God. Following Her you do not go astray, praying to Her you do not despair, thinking of Her you do not err. If she holds you, you do not fall; if she protects you, you do not fear; if she guides you, you do not grow weary; if she gives you her favour, you reach your goal, and so you experience for yourself how rightly it has been said: "And the Virgin's name was Mary" (In laudibus Virginis Matris II, 17).

+ Giovanni D’Ercole

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B (11 August 2024)

Biblical references: 

First reading: "By the power of that food he walked up to the mountain of God" (1 Kings 19:4-8)

Responsorial Psalm: "Taste and see how good the Lord is" (Psalm 33/34 2-3,4-5) 

Second Reading: "Walk in charity like Christ" (Eph 4,30-5,2)

Gospel: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven" (Jn 6:411-51)

1. God never leaves us alone. In the first reading we meet the prophet Elijah, Eliyyah meaning "My God is Yah" first syllable of God's name. A name that indicates well his characteristics as a prophet who fought a relentless battle against idolatry. At a certain point, however, he felt his strength waning, a situation that can happen to anyone, and being left alone and abandoned by all, he went into the desert in despair to escape Queen Jezebel who wanted to kill him. Drought, famine, loneliness, physical and moral exhaustion: the desert mirrored his inner emptiness made more acute by the fear of death. But God did not abandon him and his flight turned into a pilgrimage to the source of the Jewish faith, Mount Sinai, also called Horeb. God draws him to the Mountain of the Covenant, where he once called Moses (Ex 3) to deliver to him the tablets of the law (Ex 19) and showed him in the darkness of a cave his mysterious radiance (Ex 33:21-23). From that encounter was born the Jewish people liberated from Egyptian slavery, a metaphor for all slavery. In that same place, the new birth will take place for Elijah as the great prophet of Israel. We will get to know all this better with the miracles performed in the house of the widow of Sarepta (1 R 17:7-24) in the next XXXII Sunday of Ordinary Time, today instead we stay with Elijah, who after a day's journey tired and desperate doubts even himself because he becomes aware of his unworthiness. God does not leave him alone and an angel gives him bread, water and above all comfort from Heaven to understand the meaning of his mission. If until then he had defended an all-powerful God who destroys his enemies and had challenged him on Mount Carmel against the 450 priests of Baal, now to discover the true face of God he will have to enter the same cavern of Horeb where Moses saw the Lord: only then will Elijah also understand that the God of Love is not revealed in the hurricane, the earthquake and the fire, but in the murmur of a gentle breeze (1 R 19:12). The first reading today describes her journey of forty days and forty nights to prepare for this encounter. In the Bible, the number forty always indicates a gestation, and what the prophet went through recalls our personal experience: to be born again, one must pass through the desert and receive as a gift the bread and water that restore life when one feels abandoned and lost on the brink of suicide, despair, enslaved to sin and marked by all kinds of physical and moral suffering. Elijah believed himself to be privileged because he was called by God, now he discovers that the prophet is one like the others to whom God entrusts a mission far beyond his strength: he experiences, however, that the Lord does not abandon anyone and there are no situations that escape the power of his mercy. This is echoed in the responsorial psalm: "the poor man cries out and the Lord hears him, rescues him from all his distress" (Psalm 33/34).

2. From here comes an invitation for all: every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we hear the Lord whispering in our hearts: 'Rise up and eat, for long is the road ahead of you'.   

The inner unease of the prophet Elijah appears, albeit in a different context, in the restlessness of Jesus' listeners in the synagogue of Capernaum. Last Sunday, his discourse had stopped at these words: "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall never hunger", expressions that sounded strange and aroused perplexity and criticism in his listeners. The Jewish people knew well that there are two kinds of bread: material bread and spiritual bread, and they knew that the only spiritual bread is the word of God, as we read in Deuteronomy: "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Deut 8:3).  Understandable then the people's question: How can Jesus claim to be the word of God? How can he claim to be the one who brings eternal life, he who is the son of Joseph, a carpenter from Nazareth, and Mary a simple woman from the village? He is one like us and claims to consider himself God? To tell the truth, anyone who stops at Jesus' claims cannot but find them at first sight difficult to understand and accept. No wonder then that, as we will read in the coming Sundays, some of those present abandoned him. The listeners were peasants from Galilee accustomed to having their feet on the ground, worshipping one God and therefore enemies of idolatry. Jesus provokes them and provokes us with a question that touches the heart of Christianity: can Jesus man be God?  Question, the heart of the Christian faith that always questions and awaits a personal answer. Jesus perceives the mumbling of the people as a refusal to believe and reacts forcefully: "do not murmur among yourselves". This command on Jesus' lips recalls the severe rebuke related to unbelief, the original sin of Israel, which murmured and rebelled against God and Moses in the desert during the forty years of the exodus. It is the temptation of every believer. But Jesus continues his discourse with patient pedagogy and reiterates one after the other the fundamental points of his revelation: Yes, I am the word of God, I am the one who gives eternal life, I am the Son of God, and in confirmation he refers to the prophets who had assured: "And all shall be taught of God".

3. Yes, 'I am the bread of life' and he adds: 'this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that whoever eats of it will not perish'. The mistrust, doubts and murmurings of the listeners and even of the disciples also affect us - we should not be surprised - because to overcome the scandal of the incarnation, of Christ's death on the cross, it is indispensable to humbly listen to the voice of the Spirit who invites us to always and totally trust in God: We are saved only by God. All this is the mystery of the 'Eucharistic bread', the real presence of divine life in Jesus Christ, the presence of the Holy Trinity. If faith does not open the heart to humbly listening to the Holy Spirit, we risk reducing it all to a liturgical rite that we simply call 'the Mass'.  St John does not recount the institution of the Eucharist during the Last Supper and replaces it with the prophetic gesture of the washing of the feet, making clear the inseparable link that unites the Eucharist to the New Commandment of love and service. Some say that it is more important to do good to others than to attend Mass. Beware lest we lose sight of the fact that the fullness of evangelical love linked to the Eucharistic mystery must never be reduced to charitable, social and solidarity work. Only the faithful sharing in the Eucharist of the 'bread of life' that is God himself Love who gives himself freely opens the Christian's heart to the total gift of love.  But it can happen that we approach the celebration of the Eucharist thinking we are sharing a religious rite without understanding that instead it is welcoming into our poor existence the One who is the glory of God and the salvation of the world.  When we gather on Sunday it is not to do the most beautiful and important prayer together, but for something else: we participate in a real and living way in the very life of God - the Trinity. We can say that there is the Eucharist, Body of Christ, because the Holy Spirit "transfigures" the bread and wine into the identity of Jesus Christ, the same Spirit that Jesus with his "authority" sends for this transformation. If Jesus did not send the Spirit, the bread and wine would remain as they are; and if the Spirit were not present, no power could replace it, because Jesus' power is signified and activated by the Holy Spirit. When Christ is separated from his Spirit, the plan of God the Trinity Mercy is dissolved. In the Christian tradition, Christ and the Spirit are held closely together for the understanding of the Eucharist. And the heart of the Eucharistic celebration is sealed by the celebrant praying thus: 'Through Christ, with Christ and in Christ to you, God the Father Almighty in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honour and glory for ever and ever'.   The final Amen of the whole assembly is indispensable because it is a solemn and much needed proclamation of assent and consent: it is the signature that allows us to contemplate the glory of God through Jesus. St Jerome said that the Amen resounds like thunder from heaven (from the "Dialogues against the Luciferians", in Latin: "Dialogus contra Luciferianos).

• +Giovanni D’Ercole

P.S. The Apostle Paul invites us in the second reading from the Epistle to the Ephesians to be imitators, that is, friends of God (Eph 5:1), and this imitation is none other than our identification with Christ: as Christ loved us, "walk in charity". Linking this to the words of Jesus in Capernaum, we understand that no one can understand the Eucharist unless they are instructed and drawn by God's love. We read in the gospel: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" (Jn 6:44).  God alone knows God and that is why Jesus says that one must be instructed by God's light to enter into the mystery of the bread of life.  The Eucharist is the sign par excellence of God's covenant with humanity, it is the original expression of his love, realised by Jesus in human flesh like ours. Love indicated by the offering and sacrifice of his body and blood, celebrated every time we remember the death and resurrection of the One whom in hope we await to come in glory.

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time B (4 August 2024)

1. The manna "is the bread that the Lord has given you": this is how Moses explains to the people the meaning of the manna, which has various symbols in the Bible. The choice of the account of the manna in the first reading, taken from the book of Exodus, is linked to the "Eucharistic" discourse that Jesus gave in the synagogue of Capernaum. As many as 13 times, St John evokes the figure of Moses and the manna is mentioned five times as a symbol of the "bread of life". But what is manna? One morning the wandering Jews in the desert woke up and discovered next to their camps "a fine and grainy thing, minute as the frost on the earth" that had miraculously rained down between heaven and earth; they continued to find it every morning during their exodus in the desert. They gathered it every day except the Sabbath and kneaded it to make flatbreads to be baked with the vague taste of pasta in oil. Harvesting ceased, as we read in the book of Joshua, on entering the promised land (Jas 5:11-12). Manna has various meanings in the Bible: firstly, it is 'the bread' with which God feeds his people and tests them when they complain and murmur against him in the wilderness. It is a twofold test: firstly, Israel must learn the lesson of gratitude to the One who provides everything; and secondly, being hard-hearted people never content with anything, they must learn to remain faithful to the Lord's orders and commandments, who asks them to collect only enough manna for every single day because the surplus rots. In other words, God also educates the people he has chosen as his own.  In other books of the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms, manna becomes the symbol of God's word and divine love that continues to spread over humanity and finally, especially in the Jewish tradition, manna becomes the 'food of the messianic age'.  Ultimately, the manna in the desert also becomes for us Christians the sign of God's faithfulness and of our effort to trust him and believe his promises as we advance towards Heaven, our final homeland.

2. Psalm 77/78, of which we proclaim today only a few brief passages as a responsorial psalm, takes up the theme of God's faithfulness and of man's struggle to trust him.  The Lord "rained manna on them for food and gave them bread from heaven. Man ate the bread of the strong, he gave them food in abundance' (v.v. 23-24).  Even though gratitude for such a mysterious gift emerges here, Psalm 77/78 as a whole tells the true story of Israel, which unfolds between God's faithfulness and the fickleness of the people, even though they are always aware of the importance of preserving the memory of God's works. For faith to continue to be spread, three conditions are needed: the testimony of one who can say that God has intervened in his life; the courage to share this personal experience and pass it on faithfully; finally, it takes the willingness of a community to preserve the faith handed down by the ancestors as an inalienable inheritance. Israel knows that faith is not a baggage of intellectual notions, but the living experience of God's gifts and mercy. Here is the spiritual fabric of this psalm where in no less than seventy-two verses the faith of Israel is sung, founded in the memory of the liberation from slavery and on the memory of the long troubled pilgrimage from Egypt to Sinai marked by unfaithfulness and inconstancy: despite everything, faith is handed down from generation to generation. The strongest risk to faith is idolatry as denounced by all the prophets, a current risk in every age, today easy to recognise in the signs and gestures performed and flaunted as the boast of emancipated freedom. The psalmist denounces this idolatry as the cause of humanity's misfortune. Until man discovers the true face of God, not as he imagines it but as he is in truth, he will find the road to happiness barred because all kinds of idols block our path to responsible freedom. Superstition, fetishism, witchcraft, thirst for money, hunger for power and pleasure, worship of the person and ideologies force us to live in the regime of fear preventing us from knowing the true face of the living God. In verse 8 of the psalm (77/78), which we do not find in the liturgy today, the psalmist indicates unfaithfulness with the image of the valiant archer who fails and fails in his mission: "The sons of Ephraim, valiant archers, turned their backs in the days of battle". If today's 'cancel culture' wants to make us forget that everything is a gift in life, we fall into a sadness full of ingratitude, going so far as to mutter angrily: 'God does not exist, and if he does exist, he does not love me, indeed he has never loved me'. It follows that the dark clouds of ingratitude and anger sadden life and only the liberating experience of faith dispels and disperses them because it makes us rediscover that God exists, loves and forgives: his name is Mercy!

3. In order not to give in to the temptation of idolatry, which is fashionable today, God offers us a twofold nourishment: material food and spiritual food expressed in the "sign" of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes with which Jesus feeds an immense crowd. In the synagogue of Capernaum, Jesus takes this miracle as the starting point for the long discourse on the "bread of life" that is the Eucharist. A discourse that will continue in the coming Sundays, and has a surprising incipit at first sight. To the people who ask him a simple question: "Rabbi, when did you come here?" he does not answer directly, but starts with a solemn formula: "Verily, verily I say unto you", similar to that of the prophets in the Old Testament: "The Lord's prayer".  He draws attention to something important and difficult to understand, which he is about to say, and three times the listeners interrupt him with objections. With educational and provocative skill, using metaphorical and symbolic language, Jesus also leads us, step by step, to the revelation of the central mystery of faith: the mystery of the "Word who became flesh and dwelt among us" by offering his life on the cross for the salvation of mankind. In the entire discourse on the "bread of life" we hear resound the unsurpassed meditation of the prologue of the fourth gospel: Jesus is the Word of the Father who came into the world to give, to those who accept him, the power to become children of God, "to those who believe in his name and have been begotten of God" (cf. Jn 1:12). And to be clear, he immediately says that the people did not grasp the sign of the miracle: "You sought me out not because you saw signs, but because you ate of those loaves and were satisfied".  As if to say, you are happy because of what you have eaten, but you have not grasped the essential: I did not come to satisfy your hunger for material food, but this bread is the sign of something more important. Indeed, it was not I who acted, but the heavenly Father who sent me to give you a different food that preserves you for eternal life.  In fact, the distinction between material food and spiritual food was a theme dear to the Jewish religion, as is well understood in Deuteronomy: God "fed you with manna that you did not know... to make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but by what comes from the mouth of the Lord" (Deut 8:3) and in the book of Wisdom: "You fed your people with angel food, you offered them bread from heaven that was ready-made without effort, capable of providing every delight and satisfying every taste.  This food of yours manifested your sweetness towards your children; it was adapted to the taste of those who swallowed it and became what each one desired...not the different kinds of fruit nourish man, but your word preserves those who believe in you" (Wis.16:20-28). The listeners understand what Jesus is referring to and ask: "What must we do to do the works of God?".  Jesus then presents himself as the expected Messiah: "This is the work of God: that you believe in him whom he has sent. And why believe? Moses performed the miracle of the manna and at that time great was the expectation for the promised manna as the food of the messianic age. The third question is therefore understood: "What work do you do that we may believe?" and Jesus answers: "My Father gives you the bread from heaven, the true bread". Misunderstanding does not stop him in his self-revelation and the Gospel text today closes with the proclamation of the Eucharist: "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst'. The secret then is to have Faith! 

Good Sunday to all + Giovanni D'Ercole

P.S. I add today, memorial of the holy curate of Ars, Jean-Marie Vianney, this thought of his on faith and the Eucharist: "What joy for a Christian who has faith, who, rising from the Holy Table, leaves with all of heaven in his heart! Ah, happy the house in which such Christians dwell!... what respect one must have for them, during the day. To have, in the home, a second tabernacle where the good God has truly dwelt in body and soul!"