Creation is replete with all the elements, nutrients and chemicals that ensure our survival. However, people do not live by bread alone. The God of Jesus Christ not only provides our physical needs but also those spiritual needs that sustain us when our emotional or other personal needs are not being met.
Possible Preaching Themes
Possible Scientific Resources
- The spiritual nutrition that sustained the forebearers of Jesus’ listeners is no longer sufficient for the new vision of God’s reign that Jesus is revealing.
- There are many forms of malnutrition. Some of them threaten physical death, other threaten relational or spiritual death.
- Eating healthily
- A short video explaining the challenges of healthy eating, especially how the brain processes the tastiness of food milliseconds before processing its healthiness.
- Rich, accessible article on various benefits of eating healthy including a recipe or two.
- Scientific article that examines a broad range of scientific evidence demonstrating how the intake of certain types of nutrients, specific food groups, or overarching dietary patterns positively influences health and promotes the prevention of diseases.
- The effects of malnutrition and food insecurity
- Thorough but easy article from the Cleveland Clinic on malnutrition
- The advocacy group the Power of Nutrition lays out the devastating effects of malnutrition on child development in a highly visual and interactive way.
- A well-illustrated short article with multiple graphs on food insecurity in the United States up to 2022.
Homily Outline blending the two resources:
- Eating healthy, eating smart
- For an average person, the daily intake recommended caloric intake depends on your age and your gender
- For example, according to the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, caloric requirements for the average female according to age are:
- 16-18 require 1800-2400
- 19-25 require 2000-2400
- 26-30 require 1800-2400
- 31-50 require 1800-2200
- 51-60 require 1600-2200
- And 61+ require 1600-2000
- The caloric intake for the average male, however, is both higher and more differentiated:
- 16-18 require 2400-3200
- 19-20 require 2600-3000
- 21-35 require 2400-3000
- 36-40 require 2400-2800
- 41-55 require 2200-2800
- 56-60 require 2200-2600
- 61-75 require 2000-2600
- 76+ require 2000-2400
- That calculus changes drastically, however, if you are a high performance athlete.
- The National Strength and Conditioning Association recommends that strength male athletes need around 23 calories per pound of bodyweight and females 20 per pound.
- A 200-pound male weightlifter may require 4,600 to 7,200 calories daily, while a 130-pound female athlete may need 3,000 to 4,700 calories daily.
- Such high-performance athletes have personalized diets to achieve the requisite amount of calories.
- Holy feeding, compelling mission
- While we are in Year B of the Lectionary, and ordinarily read Gospels from Mark
- because his Gospel is the shortest of the four
- and John’s theology of the Bread of Life is so important
- for 5 consecutive weeks – from the 17th to the 21st Sundays – we are graced and confronted with the great Johannine discourse.
- This story begins like 5 similar stories in the gospels, with Jesus feeding a large crowd
- but then it turns from a miracle of physical feeding
- to a teaching on our need for spiritual food.
- His hearers knew the tradition of God feeding faithful followers
- like the famed manna in the desert story
- or the tale in the first reading of the feeding of the prophet Elijah.
- But Jesus is suggesting that their spiritual diet is now insufficient
- for the new training he is inaugurating
- necessary to be believers and disciples in the new reign of God he is revealing.
- While we are in Year B of the Lectionary, and ordinarily read Gospels from Mark
- John’s Eucharistic Innovation
- John is a gifted theologian who crafted his gospel with great care.
- His Last Supper story is the longest such narrative in all of the gospels (chps. 13-17).
- Despite its length, nowhere in that recounting does Jesus take bread into his hands or pick up a cup of wine:
- these chapters are devoid of “the words of consecration” or institution narrative,
- found in all of the other gospels as well as in St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.
- In place of any “institution narrative” he instead illustrates what it means to be his body in his stunning humility when washing the feet of his disciples.
- Ironically, it is his bread of life which contains his version of the institution narrative:
- Instead of “my body which is given for you”
- he reverts to the “flesh” language used so pointedly in his prologue
- announcing that the bread he gives his “flesh for the life of the world.”
- Our Eucharistic Mission
- John’s substitution of foot washing with an institution narrative
- as well as his displacement of an institution narrative
- into a bread of life discourse
- that begins with the feeding of thousands
- has very clear missionary overtones.
- To encounter Jesus as the bread of life
- and to accept him as the ultimately source of nourishment who will lead us to everlasting life
- is also a call to enact with care and consistency his gift of foot washing
- inextricably linked to feeding the masses and nourishing the broken.
- Just as there is so much food insecurity in the world and even in our own country
- There is great spiritual insecurity that needs the nourishment of the Bread of Life.
- The psalm today invites us to “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”
- It also exposes all of those who do not taste goodness, do not taste bread
- Living in nutritional and spiritual deserts.
- Augustine said it well: Become what you eat
- We do not simply receive eucharist but become eucharist “for the life of the world.”
- John’s substitution of foot washing with an institution narrative
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Preaching with Sciences
Edward Foley, Capuchin
Duns Scotus Professor Emeritus of Spirituality
Professor of Liturgy and Music (retired)
Catholic Theological Union
Vice-Postulator, Cause of Blessed Solanus
