(Audio)
Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me
not because you saw signs
but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Jesus does help us even with the wants and desires of ours which are natural and even biological. But he doesn't want us to be content with just that level of fulfillment. If he just fulfilled our desires on demand we would only become more and more selfish, even if he was only answering those desires of ours which were not bad. The problem is that there is nothing in such desires to draw us beyond ourselves. This is why Jesus calls us to want more, not less. He calls us to a food that satisfies our spirits, that leads us beyond the confines of of being closed in on ourselves, and that gives us what we truly need.
Do not work for food that perishes
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.
Only the life given away can endure. Jesus is the Bread of Life because he laid his life down out of love for the Father and for us. As we share in it we find ourselves more able to make an offering of our own lives. Yet it is also in this bread that we find not only the secret of self-gift but also its reward. We find new life, united in one body. The bread which Jesus gives contains all sweetness within it.
It is the food that endures for eternal life that is the source of the power we see displayed by Stephen in Acts.
people . . .
came forward and debated with Stephen,
but they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke.
When we try to give testimony on our own, out of obligation, we tend to be defensive. We have something to prove and we can't conceal our insecurities. When, rather, we give testimony as a gift of self made possible by the food of eternal life that we first receive, then it is that we speak with true conviction, even authority.
All those who sat in the Sanhedrin looked intently at him
and saw that his face was like the face of an angel.
We are called to elevate our desires. Saint Augustine reminds us, God has made us for himself and our hearts are restless until the rest in him. We cannot attain to this by our own efforts. We can't even sate our own natural hunger or that of the crowds around us with any consistency. Much less can we satisfy the deeper spiritual needs that we all share. Jesus can satisfy us at every level at which we hunger. Today he calls us to make sure that we are asking from him as much as he desires to give. Why settle for less?
Jesus answered and said to them,
“This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”
We tend to look for work we can do precisely because the results we desire are not as lofty as those which Jesus desires. We wouldn't even confuse ourselves about doing the works of God if we understood how far beyond all we can ask or imagine those works truly are.
Jesus, feed us with the food that endures for eternal life, that gives us life and makes us gift. We believe that you alone can do this.
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