{"id":5473,"date":"2015-08-12T11:15:01","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T16:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/?p=5473"},"modified":"2026-02-26T13:47:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T19:47:41","slug":"being-bread-for-life-a-sacrifice-pleasing-to-the-lord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/2015\/08\/12\/being-bread-for-life-a-sacrifice-pleasing-to-the-lord\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Bread for Life: A Sacrifice Pleasing to the Lord"},"content":{"rendered":"

Messy Jesus Business\u00a0Rabble Rouser<\/a>, Amy Nee-Walker<\/a>,\u00a0recently wrote\u00a0the\u00a0following Scripture reflection “Being Bread for Life: A Sacrifice Pleasing to the Lord” for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time and posted it on the <\/em>Catholics On Call\u00a0blog.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Catholics<\/a>
Artist: Rita Corbin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In today\u2019s readings, John the Baptist is prodded past the point of despair through miraculous nourishment in the desert, St. Paul exhorts the church in Ephesus to be \u201cimitators of Christ,\u201d who, as Jesus iterates in the Gospel of John, is \u201cthe bread of life.\u201d\u00a0 Meditating on these readings on August 9th 2015, I am moved by how poignantly they contrast to the events that happened on this same date, 70 years ago.<\/p>\n

On August 9, 1945, the U.S. detonated their second nuclear bomb, \u201cFat Man,\u201d on the heavily populated city of Nagasaki.\u00a0 An estimated 73,884 people were killed, another 74,909 continuing to labor under the misery of loss of health, land, resources and beloved friends, family and community.\u00a0 Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker<\/a>, brought home this seemingly distant tragedy, writing, \u201cvaporized, our Japanese brothers [and sisters] \u2013 scattered, men, women and babies to the four winds, over the seven seas.\u00a0 Perhaps we will breathe their dust into our nostrils, feel them in the fog of New York, on our faces, feel them in the rain.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a new book, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War<\/a><\/em>, Susan Southard further personalizes the story of those who suffered through and survived the massacre at Nagasaki by focusing on the lives of five Hibakusha (the name given to survivors of the bombings).\u00a0 She tells of Taniguchi Sumiteru who, at the time of detonation, was a 16-year old boy, riding his bicycle to deliver mail throughout the city.\u00a0 The bomb destroyed over three square miles of the city in which Taniguchi lived and worked.\u00a0 It was 17 months before he could sit up, having had the skin melted off his back and arms.\u00a0 Because of lying face-forward in bed so long, his chest too began to rot away.\u00a0 After four years Taniguchi was finally discharged from the hospital.\u00a0 As doctors and nurses did the excruciating work of repairing his body, he is reported to have cried out, \u201cKill me, kill me!\u201d preferring to die than to endure the pain any longer.<\/p>\n

As I read the lament of Elijah in the wilderness, \u201cThis is enough \u2026 take my life!\u201d I hear the wails of young Taniguchi and those who thought it better to have died than survive the pain of their injuries or the turmoil of radiation sickness and cancer.\u00a0 Yet, just as Elijah was ordered to eat and endure for the sake of those who remain, so the Hibakusha, like Taniguchi, endured their bodily and emotional trauma and engaged with life that they might be representatives for those from whom life was irrevocably stolen.<\/p>\n

Nuclear weapons, and the radiation they emit, wreak havoc on bodies, poison waterways, and seep into the soil, sowing seeds of destruction for generations.\u00a0 It is a death that strikes heavily and spreads deeply, infecting the sources of life for the present and the future.\u00a0 The U.S. is the only nation that has used nuclear weapons as an act of war and continues to be a leader in nuclear munitions and in further development of nuclear armament and technologies.<\/p>\n

What then are we are called to as we approach the Presence who is revealed in the Word, in prayer, in the Eucharist?\u00a0 What are we called to if not to be bearers and sharers of that presence; to be bread for the hungry, to proffer nourishing life in resistance to a culture that cultivates death?\u00a0 St. Paul, notorious for his tendency toward convoluted prose, manages to write quite plainly and eloquently in his letter to the Ephesians:<\/p>\n

\u201cAll bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice.\u00a0 And be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love.\u201d<\/p>\n

This Christ, very much a man with all the fears and pains that accompany life within the flesh, willingly proclaimed himself as \u201cthe living bread that came down from heaven.\u201d \u201cThe bread that I will give,\u201d he said, \u201cis my flesh for the life of the world.\u201d\u00a0 In this, Jesus fully acknowledges that to give bread for the nourishment of life in the world would come at a personal cost and he was willing to give it, sacrificing even his own life.<\/p>\n

What does it mean to be followers of one who rejects self-preservation, one who would choose that his own body be broken, his own flesh be consumed for the sake of giving life to others, rather than ever being an instrument of harm?<\/p>\n

On August 6, 1985, in a radio message to the people of Japan, Pope John Paul II said<\/a> of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,<\/p>\n

\u201cSuch a tragic destiny is not inevitable.\u00a0 It can<\/em> and must<\/em> be avoided.\u00a0 Our world needs to regain confidence in its capacity to choose moral good over evil \u2026 One must affirm and reaffirm, again and again, that the waging of war is not inevitable or unchangeable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elijah, after being roused from despair, continued to be a prophetic voice in the name of God.\u00a0 The Hibakusha bore the trauma of horrific wounds and unhealable memories and went on to be a voice for those who lost their lives as well as a healing presence for those who survived.\u00a0 Jesus overcame death by willingly accepting it so that we all might discover the way to peace and to life abundant.<\/p>\n

How do we walk on amidst these truths? For today, I sit in prayer with the presence of the Spirit; I hold the generations who suffer from reckless, destructive war-making\u2014as well as those who suffer from my own careless interactions and complicity in social evils\u2014in my heart. I ask that I might be transformed and become a true image-bearer of the compassionate, forgiving, nourishing, healing Christ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Messy Jesus Business\u00a0Rabble Rouser, Amy Nee-Walker,\u00a0recently wrote\u00a0the\u00a0following Scripture reflection “Being Bread for Life: A Sacrifice Pleasing to the Lord” for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time and posted it on the Catholics On Call\u00a0blog.\u00a0 In today\u2019s readings, John the Baptist is prodded past the point of despair through miraculous nourishment in the desert, St. Paul...","protected":false},"author":4256190,"featured_media":5482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[115341],"tags":[47293377,342837,43813,1505767,65622,2062,134196,381458065,23546967,200540,60503346,232794098],"series":[698756626],"class_list":["post-5473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-equity-and-justice-equity-and-justice","tag-catholics-on-call","tag-elijah","tag-eucharist","tag-hibakusha","tag-hiroshima","tag-japan","tag-john-the-baptist","tag-nagasaki-life-after-nuclear-war","tag-nineteenth-sunday-in-ordinary-time","tag-nuclear-bomb","tag-susan-southard","tag-taniguchi-sumiteru","series-messy-jesus-business"],"acf":[],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/catholics-on-call-worksofmercywar.jpg","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/wp-content\/plugins\/seriously-simple-podcasting\/assets\/images\/no-album-art.png","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/feed\/podcast\/messy-jesus-business","embedCode":"

Being Bread for Life: A Sacrifice Pleasing to the Lord<\/a><\/blockquote>