SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - JULY 28, 2024

SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Every Christian knows the Lord’s Prayer by heart because it is the perfect way for us to communicate with God,just as Christ intended it to be when he shared it with us. But we often overlook the significance of a key phrase in the prayer when we say, “give us this day our daily bread.” The word “daily” here is a poor translation of the original Greek word, epiousios, which means “super-substantial”. The very identity of Christianity hinges on this one phrase: in our life, God gives us bread that satisfies ourselves completely. This bread is not symbolic or metaphorical, but something real and tangible - His own body, His entire self.

READ THIS SUNDAY'S MESSAGE

The Eucharist is the Source and Summit of Christian Life, as defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. That small piece of bread undergoes something radical and miraculous at the Mass in order to become the body and blood of Jesus Christ, a moment we refer to as transubstantiation, literally understood to be a changing from one substance to another. In the Lord’s Prayer when we refer to the “supersubstantial bread,” we are not referring to the substance (or substances) that nourish us temporarily, like bread or other gifts of life that we attribute to God. Rather, this is God Himself, because only He is capable of satisfying us completely. For those outside of the Catholic Church, to worship what is by all appearances a piece of bread is strange; however, God Himself desired that it be so. Our first indications of this can be found in multiple different stories about the miracle of bread or other food found in the Old Testament, with one example being the story from this Sunday’s First Reading about the prophet Elisha feeding a crowd through a miraculous multiplication of barley loaves. All of those stories, though, were prefigurements of what was to come in the person of Christ. This Sunday’s Gospel covers the most important miracle Jesus performed in his public ministry - the multiplication of the loaves in chapter 6 of the Gospel of John. This Chapter makes tangible and fully realizes all of the symbolism that came before regarding the nourishing property of bread provided by God; however, this miracle is the first step of Jesus’ most important lesson in this chapter, that a bread of true and everlasting substance has come down from Heaven in order to satisfy the faithful completely.

This miracle is the most important miracle Jesus performed because it elicited a shift in his teaching ministry. No longer was it necessary for metaphors and similes to carry the burden of a message; now, Christ could begin to give himself truly and completely to the people he loved so dearly. But in this message, the people misunderstood. Immediately, his identity as the Savior of Israel was known publicly, and his response was to withdraw. He never desired to be made king, because there was more to his identity that the people had not yet identified. When you pray the Lord’s Prayer and you petition God to give you “this day our daily bread,” remind yourself what you are asking for. Are you asking for the things that satisfy you in the moment? The things that alleviate suffering or loneliness temporarily? Or are you actually asking God for something “supersubstantial,” a substance not like mere bread or food, but one that will satisfy you completely? As Christians, we know only God is that substance. As Catholics, we know that the Eucharist is that substance. This is all we need. Do not misidentify Christ in your own life; he is not here to rid you of your pain or suffering, but to transform those things into love, just as God transubstantiates something temporal into something supersubstantial