Year B
Discover the deeper meaning and connections found in this week's readings, through these great commentaries written by our priests.
Explore this week's readings and hear what God is saying to us through His Word.
Find out more about how we can mark this special day in our liturgy.
See our music recommendations for the liturgy.
Our readings today demonstrate God’s great generosity. To those who found the manna and quails in the desert, they were being given sustenance until they reached the Promised Land; this is something which the people in the crowd referred to in their encounter with Jesus in today’s Gospel. But Jesus pointed out to them that it was not Moses who provided their food, but God.
If we remember last week’s Gospel, we heard about Jesus feeding the multitudes with a small boy’s picnic. Jesus gave thanks for the offering, blessed it and broke it to share with more than five thousand men, women and children. The people of Jesus’ time were great ones for looking for signs; in today’s Gospel they ask again for a sign so that they can believe in Jesus. Jesus explains that God provides the signs; God sends the true bread, which gives life to the world. Jesus is the bread of life; He asks us to come to Him and we will never hunger again, to believe in Him and we will never thirst.
In St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we are reminded that as Christians, we are expected to live our lives in a certain way. We are not to live as the ‘pagans live’. As Christians we are temples of the Holy Spirit (1Cor 6:19), so we are to guard against our mind being ‘corrupted by illusory desires’ (deceptive or unreal). Instead, we are to trust in Jesus; immerse ourselves in the Word of God; allow our ‘minds to be renewed by a spiritual revolution’ and live fully as the new beings our Baptism created us to be living a life of ‘goodness and holiness of the truth’.
This can only be achieved through Jesus. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life; no-one can reach God except through Him. We do this by listening to the Word of God and receiving the Bread of Life at Mass. By studying and reflecting on the Word of God, between Masses and by putting what we have learned and what we have received into action in our everyday lives.
The message from Jesus, today is that we are to look for what truly satisfies; today’s world seems to be more about instant gratification rather than taking a long-term view. Jesus says why look for bread that leaves you hungry or water which will leave you thirsting for more. He offers something different, revolutionary even; He is the true bread that satisfies.
Does how you satisfy your cravings leave you looking for more?
Are you constantly looking for something different?
If your answer to either of these questions is ‘yes’ then turn to Jesus, Jesus has enough to satisfy the deepest hunger – remember his words “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry; he who believes in me will never thirst.”
Raniero Cantalamessa, who has been preacher to the Papal Household for the past 3 popes, sums up the importance of the Eucharist, when he said “the Eucharist is present in the entire history of salvation”. He supports this by saying “it is present in the Old Testament as a figure, in the New Testament as an event, and in our own time of the Church, as a sacrament. The figure anticipates and prepares the event, the sacrament ‘prolongs’ the event and actualises it.”[1]
‘One bread, one body, one Lord of all, one cup of blessing which we bless. And we though many, throughout the earth, we are one Body, in this One Lord’.[2]
Further Reading
Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)
CCC 1333-1336: Eucharistic signs of bread and wine
CCC 1691-1696: life in Christ
The Eucharist Our Sanctification – Raniero Cantalamessa
[1]Raniero Cantalamessa, The Eucharist Our Sanctification, (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1993)6.
[2]John Foley SJ, Hymns Old and New,(Kevin Mayhew Limited, Stowmarket, Suffolk,1989)744.
On the 17th Sunday, the Gospel of the miraculous feast of the Five Thousand was read. In Year B of the Lectionary Cycle, this 18th Sunday marks the beginning of Jesus’ discourse from John 6 about himself as the Bread of Life. This discourse will form the Sunday Gospel for the next three Sundays.
In the Prayer over the Offerings, the final line “make of us an eternal offering to you” is taken up in the Third Eucharistic Prayer as part of the commemoration of the Saints. The Eucharist is a “spiritual sacrifice” which unites us to the self offering of Christ. From that ritual and sacramental union stems all of our Christian practice and living.
It might be appropriate to have the following Bidding as the last of the biddings in the Prayer of the Faithful:
Let us pray that the blessings and grace given us in the Bread of Life
may clothe us in holiness and truth,
as a creation renewed in Christ.
Note: These hymns have been chosen from the Laudate Hymn book:
All who hunger, gladly gather (L477)
Bread for the world (L625)
Alleluia, sing to Jesus (L644)
My God, and is thy table spread (L651)
Guide me, O though great Redeemer (L960)
Do you have questions about the liturgy and how we are called to participate in it? Explore how the Church councils, saints, and popes have answered this key question and many more.
Every movement of the Mass is rich in meaning but we can become over-familiar with it. Rediscover the Mass and explore how it relates to the Exodus story, where many of its rituals come from, and how it makes Jesus present to us today.
