Even as we reach the end of another week, it is good to be reminded of the reverberating significance of the Gospel message from last Sunday. I had been subliminally ruminating on the meat in this beautiful sandwich all week only to be consciously met with the timeliness of it’s underlying message at quite a late stage in the week, having come to Saturday once again. Even though it may strike some as somewhat late out of the pan, it is the often the case that God dishes up that spiritual nourishment, from the depth and breadth of our gestating contemplations when we most need it as opposed to when the world thinks we should adhere to its’ own timing by getting the word out ‘on time’.

Continuing on from the previous week’s Gospel theme, and even correlating too with some of the themes drawn out in my previous post – namely those ones pertaining to Jesus being the Bread given for the Life of the World – last Sunday’s Gospel features Jesus asking the pivotal question: “Do you all truly seek to know about the spiritual signs behind the Bread you consumed or do you just want to consume it as mere physical sustenance?”

And so, last Sunday’s Gospel message ought to have connected our hearts with the reality Jesus had us enter into the Sunday before. This is a continuing thread, about Jesus being our life’s Bread. Jesus entered us into the mystery two weeks earlier by showing us why He did what He did with them five loaves (and two fish) but even though this was an outward, physical manifestation of His divine comport, many did not really appreciate the symbolic gesture of this manifestation pointing to His divinity. It was as though they took what He gave them in the physical sense, i.e. the bread, the bountiful meal He shared aplenty for granted. And because many of the Fivethousand took this food for granted and as though it was only a gesture of Him fulfilling their material needs, the holistic symbolic comport of the miracle that took place escaped their hearts. And it’s not that Jesus denies the validity of physical sustenance but rather, He so earnestly desires for us to know that there is more to it than simply that aspect alone. For we are not just physical beings but spiritual beings as well and one part of us in the order of creation, as God has so deemed it thus, cannot do without the other. Neither are we just spiritual beings as the Gnostics would have it. No! We are a composite of two interdependant aspects and so it is vital for us to take stock of this fact and strive to conscientiously interweave these two complementary facets of our God-given makeup into the depth and breadth of our everyday lives. For if and when we take the necessary steps to do this, we will see miracles happen, we will see profound spiritual changes for our betterment and the betterment of the world around us take place, and even though maybe not all at once – at least not at the outset anyhow – little by little it will grow, it will come.