Nourish Your Soul: Prayer, Interpretation and Christ

Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuit saint and founder, wrote a series of meditations called the Spiritual Exercises. In several instances, especially toward the last meditations, Ignatius asks the retreatant to consider how God labors in creation to bring about and sustain the whole enterprise we call life. It is noteworthy that Ignatius sees what today’s Gospel also points out: God is the one who labors; God nourishes; and the community of faith is invited to trust in that reality. 

Sunday’s readings are about nourishment for the body and spirit. The historical memory of Israel’s hunger and the existential threat that represented is recorded in today’s first reading. If only they had died in Egypt, the people complain, rather than face a new form of suffering. “But you have led us into this wilderness to make this whole assembly die of famine!” (Ex 16:3). God responds with a promise of quail in the evening and bread in the morning to satisfy their hunger. In other words, the assembly needs to reduce their distress and instead trust in the God who continues to nourish the community without any mediator other than Moses as a spokesperson. As the wandering people in the desert receive the bread of their morning sustenance, they ask Moses what it is, since it looks unfamiliar. “This is the bread,” responds Moses, “that the Lord has given you to eat” (Ex 16:15).

From a religious perspective, not all faith traditions view spiritual nourishment in the same manner. The Jewish faith today is centered around prayer and interpretation of Torah, or the law. God speaks through the sacred text. God sustains the community through word and tradition as a lifeline like water to the roots of a tree. The law becomes a source of life that in return gives life to others when the community lives by its teachings. 

Today’s Gospel continues the bread of life discourse centered around the interpretation of one key passage of Scripture: “He gave them bread from heaven to eat” (Jn 6:31). This particular verse calls to mind today’s readings from Exodus and from today’s psalm. “God rained manna upon them for food; grain from heaven he gave them” (Ps 78:24; Ex 16:4, 14). As Jesus begins to point to himself, confirmed by God the Father, this particular interpretation gives us a clue to a unique source of nourishment for the disciples of Jesus. Christianity, therefore, finds its nourishment in a person as much as the Jewish faith finds its source in the word of God. 

Perhaps one thing that both faith traditions can agree upon is the truth that all spiritual paths need some type of continual sustenance, like prayer, a sacred text, a ritual or a person. Meanwhile, the one thing Christians ought to remember is confirmed in today’s passage. “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent” (Jn 6:29). The laboring of the faithful is to practice faith. May the bread of life help us to live out what we profess to trust.