Reflection for the Fourth Sunday of Lent
Fourth Sunday of Lent (Laetare Sunday): Reading I, Year C
Joshua 5:9a, 10-12
The LORD said to Joshua,
“Today I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you.”
While the Israelites were encamped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho,
they celebrated the Passover
on the evening of the fourteenth of the month.
On the day after the Passover,
they ate of the produce of the land
in the form of unleavened cakes and parched grain.
On that same day after the Passover,
on which they ate of the produce of the land, the manna ceased.
No longer was there manna for the Israelites,
who that year ate of the yield of the land of Canaan.
The first reading for this Sunday of rejoicing has the Israelites gladdened at eating the food of the Promised Land having been fed for forty years on the manna God gave them in the desert. Many years after this coming into Canaan, a psalmist will reflect on this bread from heaven: “Mere men ate the bread of angels” (Ps. 78:24). How did the Israelites see this “bread of angels” and how does that perception mirror our own response to gifts from above?
The wandering Israelites vented to Moses and Aaron, “Would that we had died at the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread! But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!” The Lord responded, “I will now rain down bread from heaven for you” (Ex. 16:3-4). He heard their complaints and speedily came to the aid of the ravenous grumblers. Mysterious white flakes covered the ground the very next morning. The bread that He provided was truly miraculous and a sign of God’s fatherly care for His chosen people. But how did the Israelites see it? They continued to complain: “We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt, and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now we are famished; we see nothing before us but this manna” (Nm. 11:4b–6).
Contrast the opinion of the complainers with the exalted language describing manna in other parts of the Bible. Manna was so sacred that it was placed in the Ark of the Covenant along with the tablets containing the Ten Commandments and the staff of Aaron (Heb. 9:4). The book of Wisdom expounds on manna in the following way: “[Y]ou nourished your people with food of angels and furnished them bread from heaven, ready to hand, untoiled-for, endowed with all delights and conforming to every taste” (Wis. 16:20). But in Deuteronomy, Moses points out that there is a lesson in the manna. “He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Deut. 8:3).
Although the manna came as a miraculous sign of God’s providential care, it was meant to make the Israelites hungry for God. It seems we must hold two things simultaneously about the manna. On the one hand, the manna was a miraculous gift from God to feed His chosen people. On the other hand, the recipients of this heavenly food came to detest it. For understandable reasons, the Israelites murmured against it; they wanted meat; they wanted variety in their diet; in other words, manna just wasn’t enough. We cannot sit back and sneer at the Israelites for shunning the gifts of God. We must understand that sometimes when we are in the desert of sin or the desert of emptiness and longing, we do the same thing—we grumble against God because He doesn’t seem to be attentive to our needs.
The problem of the Israelites was a lack of hope. Though God had great plans for His chosen people, the Israelites were stuck in their narrow vision of a God who will not provide. Sometimes the gifts God gives us are true gifts, like the manna given to the Israelites, but they are not enough. They fail to satisfy because they’re not meant to be the thing we feed on forever; they’re meant to be replaced by something greater. The best example is Christ’s fulfillment of manna in the Eucharist. God gave the Israelites manna in the desert, but in the Eucharist He gives us true Bread from Heaven. He gives us His very self which serves not just to sustain us for the day, as the manna did, but to give us life everlasting.
This Lent, let us invest our hope in God, that even though the gifts He gives us seem peculiar, they will lead us to better things if we keep our eyes on the Lord.