Today we continue with the second part our homily series called “More than enough.”

Last Sunday, we talked about how our God is the God of MORE than enough — that He always provides what we need, when we need it, and how we need it. We saw this in action when Jesus miraculously multiplied “not-enough” — the five loaves and two fish — and made it more than enough for over 5,000 hungry people.

But this week I want to pose this question: 

What happens when what God provides us with… still doesn’t seem like it’s enough?

Because this is our experience, right?

We have these moments when God breaks through, when He shows up and provides for us in AMAZING ways, when He multiplies our “not-enough” and makes sure we have what we need — And when that happens, we often say to Him: “Thank you God! This is MORE than enough!!! … I’m never gonna forget this moment. I promise that I’ll never be the same after THIS… THIS will always be enough for me.”

But then…life happens. And we move on to the next thing. 

And we can forget.

And then we start to look at our life — maybe we start to compare ourselves with other people we know… what they seem to have. What they seem to be enjoying… and we start to wonder:

“Is this really enough? Maybe I need more. Maybe I need to look elsewhere… maybe God isn’t actually giving me… enough.”

This is exactly what happened to the Israelite people in our first reading today.

They had been MIRACULOUSLY delivered out of Egypt — God had FREED them from Pharaoh’s shackles by great signs and wonders. 

Plagues had descended on the land of Egypt…The Red Sea had been split in two, and they walked through to the other side… to safety and to freedom!!!!

And so many of them probably thought to themselves in that moment of glory: “Lord, this is AMAZING. This is MINDBLOWING. I’m NEVER gonna forget this. I’ll follow you for the REST of my life! …THIS IS MORE THAN ENOUGH FOR ME.”

But then came the desert.

And all those miraculous signs and wonders faded from their memory almost immediately. They so quickly moved on. Their stomachs started to feel terribly empty and they were starting to get really exhausted, and finally… they begin to grumble against the Lord and against Moses. They complain saying:

“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!”

There it is right there.

“If only we had just DIED back in Egypt — at least back there, we had MORE THAN ENOUGH bread to eat. At least back then, we had our FLESHPOTS, our ONIONS, our COMFORT…”

What are they doing?

…They’re busy trying to remember Egypt, and they are starting to believe a lie:

“You know, I think we actually had it pretty good back then. We should have been content with what we had in Egypt! At least back then, we had our fill of bread…at least we were sort of COMFORTABLE back then… BUT THEN this Moses guy had to come along and tell us that the LORD wanted to free us. He just HAD to come and ruin a good thing we had going… and now HERE WE ARE IN THIS DESERT, DYING OF HUNGER AND THIRST. Thanks a LOT God. This is just GREAT.” 

Be honest: Has this ever happened to you? Because it has certainly happened to me.

We look back to our old way of life — our life before Jesus came along — and we might start to think: “Ya know, maybe that old life was actually more than enough for me…? Maybe I didn’t realize what I had back then? Maybe all I need to do in order to be happy, to be full, to feel comfortable, to have ENOUGH again… is to go back.”

But when we start to think like that, there’s just one problem. We’re forgetting just one tiny little detail about our old lives… about EGYPT…

WE WERE SLAVES BACK THEN!

SLAVES to our senses! SLAVES to sin! SLAVES to ourselves… to the world… to the flesh! SLAVES to our passions!

It’s important for us to expose this lie. Because this is how the devil works on us. It’s how he tempts us. He does everything he can to wear us down, make us feel abandoned in the middle of a desert, and tries to trick us into willingly going back to Egypt in chains…

But as St. Paul exhorts us in Sacred Scripture: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery!”

In other words: Don’t ever go back! Don’t get tricked into thinking that your life before Christ offered you MORE THAN ENOUGH.

Because… it didn’t.

It was never gonna be enough.

You deserve so much more.

You were made for so much more…

So don’t settle.

In our Gospel today, Jesus tells us point blank: “Do not work for food that perishes… but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”

God once gave the grumbling Israelites manna in the desert to prevent them from starving — Well, Jesus has promised us an EVEN better bread. He’s the the God of MORE THAN ENOUGH. He will give you food that endures for eternal life…

So don’t settle for anything less!

Listen again to St Paul’s exhortation to us in our second reading this weekend: 

“I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; that is not how you learned Christ. […] You should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.”

Put on the new self! Don’t you dare ever go back to the old! Be renewed instead! Be refreshed instead! Be re-convinced that what God is offering you is INFINITELY BETTER!

Here’s the reality: 

The greatest spiritual danger is not to want too much… but to settle for too little!

I’ll say that again:

The greatest danger to our souls is not when we want too much… but when we want far too little. …When we lower the bar so much that we’re actually happy with what Egypt has to offer us, which is laughably pitiful compared to what God has ready for those who love Him.

There’s a great CS Lewis quote that I think captures this idea perfectly. He says it like this: 

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

We are too easily pleased! Pleased with mud pies… when we are being offered EVERYTHING.

Simply, put: We were made for the infinite. And we should settle for nothing less than that. 

The Infinite.

Fr. Thomas Dubay in his book “Happy Are You Poor” puts it this way:

“Our deepest hungers are not for food and drink, not for amusements and recreations, not for property and wardrobes, not for notoriety and gossip. We hunger for truth, we thirst to drink beauty, we yearn to celebrate, we seek to delight, we stretch out to love and to be loved. That is why anything less than everything is not enough.”

This is hard. Because we’re fallen human beings. We still wrestle with what’s called “concupiscence” — which is that tendency to prefer less-than-holy things. That almost gravitational pull we all feel that makes it easier for us to choose evil rather than good… sin rather than virtue. This is our current predicament! We’re all in the same boat… and we’re all sea-sick as GK Chesterton says!

When we experience that gravitational pull… when we start looking back to Egypt and start remembering what we think we enjoyed back then… we just have to turn to Jesus and tell him very bluntly: “Lord, I need you to be enough for me right now. Be enough for me.”

Let’s just pray that right now together:

“Jesus… be enough for me.”

“In Your name, Jesus, I renounce the lie that anything else will satisfy me.”

“Do not work for food that perishes… but for the food that endures for eternal life.”

Don’t settle! Don’t think for one second that going back to Egypt will somehow scratch the itch, calm the mind, satisfy the heart.

It never will.

But what Jesus is offering us does satisfy the hungry heart.

“My Father,” he says “gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 

And the people in our Gospel today reply:

“Sir, give us this bread always.”

Give us THIS bread that gives life to the world — true life! Life everlasting! That sounds amazing, Jesus…What is this bread? We can almost hear an echo of the Israelites, when the manna first falls to the earth and the people look at it confused, asking: “WHAT IS IT? WHAT is this bread?”

And then Jesus says it… he says the words that each of our starving souls are aching to hear: 

“I AM the bread of life;

whoever comes to me will never hunger,

and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Don’t settle for anything less.

Only THIS Bread is enough. 

In life, you’re sure to be tempted to believe otherwise. You’re sure to be lured at some point or another by the false promise of Egypt. But it’s all empty. It’s all lies. 

Egypt has nothing to offer you anymore. 

So forget it. Forget everything from that old life of yours…

Put on the new self. And go to Him instead. Come to this altar… to the One who is the Bread of Life.