(Audio)
By the sweat of your face
shall you get bread to eat
The fall of man had consequences. No amount of excuses from Adam and Eve could prevent it. No amount of excuses for the sin and lack of conversion in our own lives will prevent us from experiencing it either. The consequences are directed at restoration. Even though we run and hide and make excuses God does not want to leave us as less than we are meant to be. Knowing good and evil apart from what God knows them to be turns out to be misery. We prefer lesser goods to greater ones and wonder why we suffer. We can't live in Eden in this condition.
When he expelled the man,
he settled him east of the garden of Eden;
and he stationed the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword,
to guard the way to the tree of life.
Exile could have simply become the new normal. But God had other plans.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
He will strike at your head,
while you strike at his heel.
God had no intention of allowing the snake to sabotage the beauty of his creation. Even at the moment of the fall God had plans for a new Adam (Jesus) who would obey and a claim a new tree of life (the cross) for the sake of his bride, the new Eve (the Church). Tempted in a garden, he was found faithful. In his cross and resurrection the fall of our first parents was not simply bypassed or ignored. It was reversed from the very inner logic that caused it in the first place. The disobedience of Adam and Eve was reversed by the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ.
Whereas after the fall mankind earned its bread by only by sweat and hard work, we see in the feeding of the four thousand in today's gospel a beginning of that punishment being reversed.
Then, taking the seven loaves he gave thanks, broke them,
and gave them to his disciples to distribute,
and they distributed them to the crowd.
Is it any wonder that when Jesus feeds the crowds they want to make him king? All the hunger in the world ever felt by anyone is a symptom of the fall. And in these gospels the crowds probably had some subconscious sense that the fall itself was beginning to be reversed. Even so, Jesus couldn't simply keep feeding them physical bread. It was essential that they learn a longing for the heavenly bread that Jesus himself would provide.
Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life,* which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal (see John 6:27).
It is this bread is in itself the fundamental reversal of the fall. It comes to us without labor even though Jesus endures the thorns of the earth to offer it to us.
But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.”
So the disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought him something to eat?”
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work (see John 4:32-34).
So today we're invited to put aside our excuses and to taste and see that the LORD is good.
In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.
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