Sunday, August 11, 2024 – Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle B Readings: Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15, Psalm 78:3-4, 23-24, 25, 54, Ephesians 4:17, 20-24, John 6:24-35

                                   BREAD THAT HEALS THE SOUL
 
     Anorexia is a disease of modern times. When bread is most abundant in rich countries, people lose their appetite. Scientists say that it is a psychosomatic syndrome. The Eucharist is bread come down from heaven. It is bread that gives life. "Whoever eats it will live forever." For lack of responsibility, many Christians are systematically deprived of the Eucharist. It is a kind of suicide by starvation because this weakness can lead to a death of the soul.
 
Sisters and brothers:
 
1. The anorexia of the soul is defeatism and discouragement. We can not avoid in our lives the arrival of extreme situations of physical and moral suffering that lay us low. How do we usually react? Normally we go through three stages:
 
First we deny that the evil we are experiencing is real; we believe that the ills of others would never happen to us. The diagnosis of a tumor, job loss, an aborted project, the death of a child, a failed test, etc... Then we recognize the reality, but we rebel against it: Why me? The others are at fault! Why does God not intervene? This makes me lose faith! My life has no meaning I'd rather die! Finally, we accept it with resignation because we see no escape. Only with the help of God will we accept it with love.
 
2. We can lock ourselves in a vicious circle. The defeatist would rather sit under the tree to die, but you can find reasons to be optimistic. Optimism makes a harsh road bearable. The defeatist has three lives within the soul: the past, present, and future. All of them disturb him. He is convinced that their faults, illnesses, and failures will happen again.
 
     The pessimist carries the root of his troubles in his own thoughts: He only sees one part of the truth, the darkest. He is color blind. The one-sided view of the world and of things makes him unhappy, unsociable, and unpleasant. Joseph Zuhr says that "Pessimism overshadows one's existence, numbs dynamism, saps energy, paralyzes action, and finally ends in discouragement and despair. That is, it ends in the destruction of life." Pessimism is a contagious disease and a form of moral decay.
 
3. "Get up and eat for the way is long!" God always sends his angel at the right time. The sacrament of the Eucharist is the very person of Jesus who feeds us only if we eat it with the necessary dispositions. Unfortunately there are among us many anorexics who lose their appetite for God. They stop eating, so they are sterile and are in danger of starvation.
 
Let us resolve not to let this plague called discouragement, weariness, defeatism enter our soul. Rather, let us cultivate optimism and high ideals. Let us say like Peter, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Only you have the words of eternal life."
 
Source: ePriest.com / Best Practices and Homily Resources for Catholic Priests