Substantial Bread – 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; August 4, 2024

When the Israelites first saw the miraculous food in the desert they asked: What is this? The question gave its name to the food: Manna.

The question “what is this?” is what philosophers would call a question about substance. For the philosophy of common sense, the philosophy of the oft neglected obvious, the world in which we live is composed of an ordered array of “substances”: rocks, birds, plants, cows, horses, wolves, and man, to name only some of the substances that are found on the earth itself. These individual substances belong to different kinds of things.

God said, ‘Let the earth put forth plants … each according to its kind upon earth.’ (Gen 1:11) God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird, according to its kind. (Gen 1:21) God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds. (Gen 1:24)

Now, it might be less obvious, especially if we have become accustomed to thinking of these changeable substances as no more than assemblages of atoms and molecules, which is not at all obvious, but these different kinds of things are not simply the sum of their parts. Beyond all that changes, there is some reality in them that binds them together, that makes them to be what they are, and this the philosophers of common sense also call “substance”. There are many kinds of “substance” and there is the “substance” which makes each to be the kind that it is. There are cows, and there is the substance of “cow”, beyond the size, shape, color, beyond the eyes, legs, nose, and tail, that make cows to be cows and not horses. There are all the appearances of cows and through which we recognize cows as cows, and through which we gain some understanding of the substance of a cow, what it is.

What does all this have to do with the manna?

Everything actually. When the Israelites asked, “What is it?” they were faced with a mysterious unknown substance. They did not get an answer and so were left with a name for the substance which was the continuous question: “What is it? Manna?”

This was the bread that God gave them to eat; it really nourished them and kept them alive, for 40 years in the desert, and then that first generation died. It was also a symbol of the true bread that comes down from heaven, the bread that God has given us to eat, the bread of eternal life, the substance of which is the most amazing and mysterious of all, because it is the substance of the manhood of the Son of God.

The appearance is bread, unleavened bread; the reality, the substance is the Body of Christ. That is what it is.

For 1,000 years the Church, in order to give accurate expression to the faith received from the Apostles has spoken of “transubstantiation”. Notice that word “substance”. This is not the miraculous transformation of water into wine, nor the natural transformation of grass into beef, transubstantiation is altogether unique. By the power of Christ’s words and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. Bread is a substance, with its proper appearance; wine is a substance, with its proper appearance. By transubstantiation the whole substance of the bread becomes the substance of the Body of Christ; the whole substance of the wine becomes the Blood of Christ. The appearances miraculously remain, sustained by the power of God; they remain, with their effects (nourishment, inebriation), but the substance is now that of the Body and Blood of Christ, seated in glory at the right hand of the Father. “What is it?” It is not bread; it is not wine; it is the Body and Blood of Christ, that the Lord has given to us in the form of food for the life of our soul.

As the bread and wine appear, but are not there, so the Body and Blood of Christ are there, but do not appear. This is the life-giving Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary according to his humanity, consubstantial to the Father, according to his divinity.

Jesus tells us: Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.

Two things are involved here: eating the food and working for the food. As for the eating, for now I will only say that it is not enough just to come forward to “take communion”. It is not enough just to consume the sacrament. Our souls must truly feed on the reality, the substance, the Body of Christ. For that we must “work”.

That “work” presupposes faith, faith which says, “Jesus said it; I believe it; Jesus said, ‘This is my Body’; I believe it is his Body.” This faith is not just a work of our mind and will, it is even more the work of God in us; it requires our saying “yes” to God working in us, as the Virgin Mary said, “yes” to becoming the Mother of God.

If our faith is full and living, rather than an empty shell, a matter of mere words, then it will set us apart from the Gentiles, which here refers to all those who do not believe, who do not have the Catholic faith, and so live in the futility of their minds. This requires that we strip ourselves of the old man and cloth ourselves with the new man.

Our translation says self, but man would be more literal. The difference is important. The old man refers to human nature as it is fallen in Adam; the new man refers to human nature as it has been redeemed and transformed by Christ. We are created beings; we do not create ourselves; we belong to a kind, mankind; we have a “substance”, a “nature” that makes us to be the sort of thing we are – human beings.

We might say that the substance of the Body of Christ is truly “substantial” food, food for our “substance”.

In our actions, then, we never invent something for ourselves out of whole cloth; we are never truly original; rather we are always originated. We always act according to a pattern; either we will follow the pattern of Adam, wear the clothing of Adam; or we will follow the pattern of Christ, wearing the clothing of Christ.

To work for the bread that endures to eternal life, to be capable of feeding our substance on the substance of Christ’s Body, we must work to strip ourselves of Adam and cloth ourselves with Christ.

Here “to work” means “to act” and “to act” means “to work”. Action refers to everything we voluntarily think, do, or say. It also refers to what we willfully omit or neglect. To choose not to act is a way of acting, it is a choice. If I choose to put off prayer until tomorrow, that is still a choice.

Now, in the final analysis, the supreme purpose that governs all our action will either be union with God in heaven, or it will fall short of that goal. The root of the Greek word for sin (hamartia), used in the New Testament, means “to fall short” or “to miss the mark,” as an arrow falls short of its target. It is not enough for the arrow of our desire to be headed in the general direction, it must be aimed at the bulls-eye. Nor can we even “see” the bull’s eye to aim at it unless we receive God’s word in faith. Nor are the “arms” of our own will sufficient to draw the bow, we need the strength of God’s grace, the strength of the Holy Spirit. That means that our first “work” must be the prayer of faith, asking God for what we need to see the bull’s eye and draw the bow.

If our supreme purpose falls short, however “high” we are aiming, however “noble” our intent, we will be governed by deceitful and corrupt desires – deceitful and corrupt because they fail to attain the supreme purpose for which we were made.

Let me give an example on a smaller scale. Generally speaking, a father of a family should set his family ahead of his career, especially if his career priority is about achieving personal goals and success. If he should prioritize career, even if it is a noble career and he seeks to go about it in an honest and upright fashion, his family will suffer and tend to fall apart. The same is true, then, if he prioritizes family over God. Only in this case, God will not “fall apart”, but his relation to God will, and as a consequence, his family will suffer as well, even though the damage is not immediately obvious.

Today we could characterize the futile way of thinking and corrupt desires of the Gentiles as “secularism.” Secularism does not always show itself as the gross blasphemy and sensual indulgence as was recently on display in Paris. Secularism can appear like an otherwise good man, who pursues useful career in an honest and upright manner, to the neglect of his family. Secularism pursues human life, in all areas, without Christ. One must speak of Jesus Christ; it is not enough to speak about faith (people use the language of faith in regard to science and in regard to the nation). Nor is it enough just to speak about God. Secularism can accept the language of God and of faith, but it cannot accept Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, crucified and risen, as the one mediator between God and men.(cf. 1 Tim 2:5) Secularism can even accept Christ, so long as he is an “add-on” to the rest of human life, but secularism cannot accept Christ as the true King, the judge of the living and the dead, who does not tolerate mediators apart from himself. Secularism does not believe in and does not work for the bread that last for eternal life. Secularism flees from the Cross of Christ. The Catholic shares this futile way of thinking when he hides his faith and his life becomes indistinguishable from those around him.

Instead St. Paul tells us: Be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new man, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.

Righteousness speaks of right order in all things: right order beneath God, right order in the soul, right order in human relationships, right order in the stewardship over creation. This right order requires “holiness”, which is something above man, a sharing in what belongs to God; it is the holiness of sanctifying grace which makes us truly to be children of God. We must then also show ourselves to be children of God, in the way we think, the way we speak, the way we act, and the way we dress.

This must be the righteousness and holiness of truth, conformed to reality, not the truncated reality of materialists and cynics, but the reality made by God, the reality of God, the reality of Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life, through whom we go to the Father. (Jn 14:6)

By stripping ourselves of the old man, by clothing ourselves with the new, by living in the righteousness and holiness of truth, we work for the food that endures to eternal life, the truly substantial food. Otherwise, we can “take communion” week after week and be no better for it. Our substance instead of being fed, will wither away from starvation.