Scripture Study for

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Understanding the Word

By Dianne Bergant, C.S.A.

God is cast in the role of a street vendor, who offers food and drink at no cost  both to those who are able to pay and to those who are not. All are invited to  come to the Lord in order to be nourished. What God has to offer is satisfying  and will be long-lasting, compared with all else for which people seem to spend  their money. The real object of the invitation is God’s announcement of the reestablishment of a covenant bond. This prophecy suggests that the covenant had  been violated, and now God is eager to restore the severed bond. Paul insists that nothing that can separate believers from the love of Christ.  He is probably challenging the long-standing notion that a person’s misfortune is  the consequence of some misdeed. Paul turns this understanding upside down  by insisting that the opposite can be true—that the righteous, precisely because  they are righteous, enter into the sufferings of Christ. In other words, misfortune  does not separate them from Christ; it can actually unite them with him. Paul  makes four significant points: 1) God’s love for us is basic to everything, 2) this  love comes to us through Jesus, 3) Jesus is God’s “anointed one,” and 4) Jesus is  the Lord to whom we give our allegiance. 

The death of John the Baptist prompted Jesus to seek a place where he might  be by himself. However, his departure did not deter the crowds, who seemed to  know where he was going and arrived there before he did. Jesus’ actions over the  food were brief but significant. He took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave  it as food. The eucharistic overtones are obvious. The role played here by the  apostles cannot be overlooked. They were the ones through whom the crowds  experienced the munificence of Jesus. The author of the Gospel shows by this  that Jesus provides for his people through the agency of the church. 

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