Bible texts with commentary
These Bible meditations are meant as a way of seeking God in silence
and prayer in the midst of our daily life. During the course of a day, take a
moment to read the Bible passage with the short commentary and to reflect on the
questions which follow. Afterwards, a small group of 3 to 10 people can meet to
share what they have discovered and perhaps for a time of prayer.
October 2014
Deuteronomy 26:1-11: Giving back to God what God has given us
When you have entered the land the Lord your God is giving you as an
inheritance and have taken possession of it and settled in it, take some of the
firstfruits of all that you produce from the soil of the land the Lord your God
is giving you and put them in a basket. Then go to the place the Lord your God
will choose as a dwelling for his Name and say to the priest in office at the
time, “I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come to the land the
Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.” The priest shall take the basket from
your hands and set it down in front of the altar of the Lord your God. Then you
shall declare before the Lord your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean, and
he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great
nation powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us
suffer, subjecting us to harsh labor. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of
our ancestors, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and
oppression. So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an
outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders. He brought us
to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey; and
now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, Lord, have given me.” Place
the basket before the Lord your God and bow down before him. Then you and the
Levites and the foreigners residing among you shall rejoice in all the good
things the Lord your God has given to you and your household. (Deuteronomy
26:1-11)
This text describes the purpose and the basic structure of Israel’s
worship. God gave the unexpected and free gift of a new life to a group of
stateless persons, making of them a people with a special relationship to him
and giving them a “land of milk and honey” to live in. The members of the
nation are invited to respond to this divine initiative by showing their
gratefulness, and to do so by returning to God part of what God has given them.
But how can we give a present to the invisible God? Here is where the institution
of organized worship comes in, to enable human beings to make asymbolic offering
to God and in this way to express their relationship to him.
And so, at harvest time, the farmer takes part of the fruits of the
earth and brings them to a place consecrated to God, a sanctuary or temple. He
gives them to a man set apart for this, a priest, who accepts the offering in
the Lord’s name and transmits it symbolically to God by placing it on the
altar, a meeting-place between heaven and earth. Then, the gift is made to
disappear in one way or another, by burning or by consuming it. This return to
God of gifts God has given, known in the Bible as a sacrifice, expresses and
reinforces the bonds between the participants. It reawakens hope that God will
always be there for his faithful and that he will continue to take care of
them. They are made aware that, in the final analysis, everything is a gift and
that the ultimate meaning of their existence does not lie in their own efforts
but in the trust that God is constantly leading and protecting them.
Consequently, for the people of the Bible offering sacrifices is not a
burdensome duty, still less something painful, but a joyful time when their
bonds with the Wellspring of life are renewed: “Then you shall rejoice in all
the good things the Lord your God has given to you….” Going to the Temple means
recalling the important moments of the past, expressing one’s present
gratefulness and trust in God and, as a result, reinforcing one’s hope in the
future. In addition, it means having a tangible experience of one’s fellowship
with the rest of the faithful.
Far from eliminating this dimension of existence, the coming of Jesus
the Messiah only makes it more concrete. Jesus does not give any material—and
therefore symbolic—presents to the One he calls Father. No, his entire
existence is a gift to the Father, expressed by a life for others and
recapitulated by his death on the cross. As the Letter to the Hebrews puts it:
“He sacrificed once and for all when he offered himself” (7:27; see also
9:25-26; 10:10). And we in our turn are invited to make our lives a gift. Paul
writes to the Christians of Rome: “I urge you to offer yourselves as a living
sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship”
(Romans 12:1). Believers know that everything is a gift and, as a result, their
sole desire is to give everything back to the One who bestows an abundance of
material and spiritual blessings.
Is it possible to live in thankfulness? Why is it often easier to ask God for something than to thank God for the good things we have received? By what attitudes and activities can I make my life into an offering to God? How can we understand, in this context, the words “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6; Matthew 9:13)?
‘I am the bread of life. Whoever
comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be
thirsty’ (Jn 6:35).
In his Gospel John tells how,
after the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus went to Capernaum. There he gave
his discourse on the bread of life during which he said: ‘Do not work for food
that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of
Man will give you’ (Jn 6:27).
For those who were listening to him it was a clear reference to manna and also to the awaited ‘second’ manna that would come down from heaven in the Messianic age.
For those who were listening to him it was a clear reference to manna and also to the awaited ‘second’ manna that would come down from heaven in the Messianic age.
Shortly afterwards, in that same
discourse, to a crowd that still did not understand him, Jesus presented
himself as the true bread come down from heaven, which is to be accepted
through faith.
‘I am the bread of
life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will
never be thirsty.’
Jesus already sees himself as
bread. In the end, therefore, this is the goal of his life on earth. He is to
be bread so as to be eaten. And to be bread so as to communicate his life to us
and to transform us into himself. So far the spiritual meaning of these words,
with their references to the Old Testament, is clear. But later on Jesus’ words
become mysterious and difficult when he says of himself: ‘The bread that
I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (Jn 6:51) and ‘Unless you
eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’
(Jn 6:53).
It is the announcement of the
Eucharist, and it shocks and puts off many disciples. Yet it is the most
immense gift Jesus wants to give humanity: his presence in the sacrament of the
Eucharist, which gives satisfaction to soul and body, the fullness of joy,
through intimate union with him.
When we are nourished by this
bread, there is no room for any other hunger. All our desires for love and
truth are satisfied by the One who is Love itself, Truth itself.
‘I am the bread of
life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will
never be thirsty.’
Therefore this bread nourishes us
with him already here on earth, but it is given to us so that we, in our turn,
may satisfy the spiritual and material hunger of the people around us.
Christ is proclaimed to the world
not so much through the Eucharist, as through the lives of Christians who are
nourished by the Eucharist and by the Word. They preach the Gospel with their
lives and their voices, making Christ present in the midst of humanity.
The life of the Christian
community, thanks to the Eucharist, becomes the life of Jesus. It is,
therefore, a life capable of giving love, the life of God to others.
‘I am the bread of
life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will
never be thirsty.’
By using the metaphor of bread,
Jesus teaches us the most genuine, the most ‘Christian’ way to love our
neighbour.
What, in fact, does loving really
mean?
May we too make ourselves one to
the point of allowing ourselves to be ‘eaten’.
This is love, to make ourselves
one in a way that makes others feel nourished by our love, comforted, uplifted,
understood.
Chiara Lubich
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