Scripture Reflections for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Year B, Lectionary 116
Even in our most challenging times in life God is present and ready to sustain us as we carry out God's mission. Like Elijah, we just have to set aside our frustrations and receive the healing and nourishing power of God's care. We have to set aside our restrictive point of view of Jesus and be open to see and receive him, the bread, the life. For in receiving the bread come down from heaven we come closer in rising up into heaven.
Hate feeling lost on Sundays at church? Searching for a better explanation of the Bible than what you hear from your pastor's sermon? Check out the following collection of audio, video, and text commentaries from various Christian experts for a better understanding of today's scripture that deal with: Anger • Bread • Closeness • Communion • Complain • Desert • Destination • Disciple • Discourage • Ecology • Elijah • Eucharist • Exhaust • Exodus • Faith • Feed • Focus • Forgive • Gift • Heaven • Holy Spirit • Identity • Imitate • Journey • Judgment • Life • Manna • Mission • Murmur • Near • Nourish • Pier Giorgio Frassati • Prayer • Presence • Prophet • Purpose • Receive • Relationship • Revelation • Sad • Sin • Soul • Suffering • Transformation • Truth • Unity • Virtue • Wine •
“So whenever Paul uses the language of 'walking' he's always talking about morality, what we call morality or ethics”
“we so easily forget Jesus and when we forget Christ dwelling with us we tend to sin”
“Our God is all powerful, there is nothing that is beyond his power. He chooses to reveal himself and to present himself to us whenever, wherever and however he wishes. It is not for us to determine, it is not for us to dictate.”
“Jesus's identity as the bread of life and our identity as beloved means that one of the most human things that we can do is show gratitude to the divine. And we show gratitude by imitating that love as best as we can, however we can”
“You can't get to heaven by being a Christian on Sunday morning and then acting like the devil for the rest of the week. God has no room in the Kingdom for hypocrites.”
“in order to arrive at heaven we must have heavenly provisions, we must eat heavenly bread to get to heaven and our problem is that we are stuffing ourselves with things that are not heavenly bread”
“we are all invited to the table to be compassion, to be forgiveness, to be love and to be kindness to others. To be these signs of Jesus to one another and to our brothers and sisters on the margins”
“before Jesus gets into talking about the sacrament of the Eucharist or eating his flesh, the first thing he says is 'I want you to believe that I have come down from heaven'”
“The 'I Am' statements in John’s gospel are a way of saying that God who is transcendent, eternal, invisible and almighty has become immanent, temporal, visible, and vulnerable in the person and ministry of Jesus”
“if we forget our center we're on survival mode. And if you and I are in survival mode our life is just going to be stressed out. God calls us...to eat and to drink and to have life, that's what Eucharist is all about”
“How long does the Eucharist last? Until Jesus comes again in glory. He's going to feed you that long”
“Let us recognize it's time to recharge, to renew our hope, to spend some time under that broom tree but then, my sisters and brothers, we have to come out from under that shade and continue to be about the work of the living God”
“When you next receive Jesus in the sacrament...join me in praying our meal at the Lord's table will bridge all that divides us and bring us into greater unity”
“The manna, the bread we are offered may not always taste like we expect it to taste but it is put in front of us every day to feed us and then to be shared with others”
“God's love for us did not begin and end at the point of creation, he continues to provide for us”
