Friday of the Second Week of Easter 2023

Published: April 21, 2023

Bishop Anthony B. Taylor preached the following homily at St. John Catholic Center in Little Rock on Friday, April 21, 2023.

Bishop Taylor

Have you ever noticed the food guide pyramid on the packaging of many foods at the store? On top are the foods we need least: fats and sugars. Below are dairy and meat products, and below them the even more important vegetables and fruits. And finally at the base of the pyramid are the most important grains and cereals, bread and tortillas, that are the foundation of a healthy diet.

In today's Gospel, Jesus feeds 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread, which sets the scene for Jesus’ great bread of life discourse in the Gospel of John. Jesus multiplied these five loaves just before Passover when people ate matza in memory of 1.) the unleavened bread their ancestors ate the day God freed them from slavery to Pharaoh; and 2.) the manna, the life-giving, but perishable bread from heaven they ate the subsequent 40 years in the desert.

And now Jesus uses these three miracles having to do with bread to teach his hearers that he is the new Passover who will free us from our slavery to sin and death, the new Manna in the form of his body and blood, the Eucharist that gives eternal life to those who eat it.

Notice that just as the food guide pyramid says that not all sources of physical nourishment are of equal importance, so also here Jesus says the same thing applies to the sources of spiritual nourishment. Jesus says in his bread of life discourse that the Eucharist is the foundation of his spiritual food guide pyramid (so to speak) and as such should serve as the foundation of our spiritual life.

Eat ordinary bread and you live one day longer. Jesus provided well for the 5,000 who were fed on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, but on the following days — as before — it was back to relying on themselves to put bread on the table. But eat Jesus’ bread of life and you will live forever.

Come to Jesus and you will never lack anything you really need because he will give you what you need, which of course is not necessarily everything we might desire, since often we desire things that in his wisdom God knows are actually not for our ultimate good or the good of others.

Rely on him — really put your faith and trust in him — and you will never again thirst for anything you really need. Jesus is the bread of God come down from heaven to give us true life. Jesus truly present in the sacrament of his body and blood, and since he is divine, the Eucharist is not only the foundation of a healthy spiritual life in this life, it also provides us with eternal life.