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18th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B - 2/8/2015 - Gospel: Jn 6:24-35
Heavenly food
It is obvious that our physical body needs food and drink daily and the food is taken from the mother earth through our labour.  Apart from the physical body's nourishment we humans have another body, the invisible one that needs to be taken care of as well. It depends on a person's belief that the invisible body is named. We Christians call it as our soul or spiritual body. It is essential to look after our soul well because when our inner life is neglected our happiness don't last long and we constantly indulging ourselves with substances to substitute for what is lacking and eventually end up as an addict. The imbalance caring for the body over the soul leads to disaster because it makes a person feel that life is a heavy burden. The ordinary food and drink are good for our physical body but are useless for the soul because the soul is not governed by the natural world. Denying God's mercy our soul will be fed with the wrong food. Medical field and nutritionists have proved that bad food intake is bad for a body and if one continues to take it the body eventually will get sick. This rule is applied for our spiritual nourishment. Good food intake gives a good outcome and a bad intake gives an unhealthy outcome. We Christians are fortunate to have Jesus who fed us with the heavenly food- the Eucharist and His teaching as Jesus once said 

'man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word proceeds out of the mouth of God' Mt 4:4.

It is the ordinary food and drink that are Consecrated and they become holy through God's power. We receive the Body and Blood of Christ, God lives in us and we live in God. The prayer over the food states that

'Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread/wine we offer you: fruit/vine of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life- our spiritual drink'.

It is neither the products of the earth nor the labour of human hands that makes the food holy but it is through God's power and goodness. By our humble petition to the God of creation, the ordinary food and drink becomes holy for our soul. In this prayer we confess that God is fully alive and active in our world. Our loving God continues to create in this world and changes the nature of the ordinary bread and wine offered on the Alter to become the heavenly food for our spiritual journey.

On our part we have nothing to offer to God rather than humbly to bless the Lord and thank God for His goodness and mercy. We acknowledge that our daily schedule may be busy but we are confidently satisfied simply because

'for in Him we live and move and have our being' Act 17:28.


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