In the first reading, Israel is in the desert, lacking food and water. They complain to Moses, who complains to God.  God intervenes and gives them water and manna.  In the Gospel, the people are hungry.  Jesus feeds them and reminds them that there is another food:  the food given by the heavenly Father.

In a way, this Gospel story hardly rings a bell in our minds for, here in North America, we ignore what it is to be hungry, for we have a lot of food.  We have mountains of food, so much so that sometimes, we throw away tons of food down the drain.

Occasionally though, we are touched, through the internet, television or newspapers, by the famine and poverty that is in many countries of the world.  And we do a little something, but our uneasiness does not stay long, for our daily occupations make these problems fall quickly into oblivion.

But for the bread that Jesus talks about in the Gospel, we are in deep need of food.  We deeply hunger for peace, for justice, for friendship, for love, for meaning.  We more and more ask ourselves:  Why do I do this?  Where am I going? What is my life worth?  Our lives, like old cars, seem suddenly to run idle. 

Too often we are worried, afraid, concerned about our family, our neighbours, the situation in our country and even the situation in the world.  We live in an atmosphere of anxiousness.  Today’s Gospel invites us to look beyond:  beyond anxiousness, beyond suspicion, beyond fright, beyond death.  For beyond anxiousness, there is peace; beyond suspicion, there is trust; beyond fright, there is boldness and beyond death, there is life.

This is the food that our Lord talks about: “whoever comes to me, will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me, will never be thirsty.”  Amen