Word to the Wise
Wednesday, July 26, 2023 - Wednesday in the 16th Week in Ordinary Time
[Exod 16:1-5, 9-15 and Matt 13:1-9]The Lord spoke to Moses and said, "I have heard the grumbling of the children of Israel. Tell them: In the evening twilight you shall eat flesh, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread, so that you may know that I, the Lord, am your God. In the evening quail came up and covered the camp. In the morning a dew lay all about the camp, and when the dew evaporated, there on the surface of the desert were fine flakes like hoarfrost on the ground. On seeing it, the children of Israel asked one another, "What is this?" for they did not know what it was. But Moses told them, "This is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat." [Exodus]
JULY 26 STS, JOACHIM AND ANN, parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Manna in the morning, quail in the evening! The manna would be considered such an important symbol that the Israelites were ordered by God to keep a sample in the Ark of the Covenant alongside the stone tablets of the ten commandments! But the manna would become for us more than a sign of God's care for the Israelites in the desert. We have to "fast forward" to the Gospel According to John at 6:31-35: "What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert...." So Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." So they said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always." Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst." [John 6:31-35]
The celebration of the Eucharist is not simply a commemoration of the Last Supper. It is the fulfillment of Christ's pledge to be with us just as God was with the Israelites in the desert and fed them with manna. (Some scholars point out that there is an actual substance secreted on a common plant that appears in the morning in the Sinai desert that can be collected and eaten.) However, the Eucharist is more than food in the physical sense, it is the very person of Christ. The Eucharist becomes a "new manna" from heaven.
The continuity is God's plan of salvation is opened for us in these scriptures from Exodus that remind us that our own "grumblings" and needs are in God's providence. AMEN