In the Sunday summer Mass readings of Liturgical Cycle Year B, we see prefigurements of the Eucharist in the First Readings, and their fulfillment in the proclamation of the Gospel. In last Sunday’s First Reading, the prophet Elisha fed a hundred men with only 20 barley loaves and a sack of grain. In upcoming Sundays, God provides the Israelites with manna in the desert, and then Elijah is sustained for forty days and forty nights on a simple meal of a jug of water and a hearth cake. In the process, we’ll also hear the Bread of Life Discourse in John’s Gospel over several weeks.
Curtis Mitch is a writer and research fellow for the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. He has been a contributor to the popular apologetics series Catholic for a Reason, has co-authored a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew in the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture series, and is the principle annotator and associate editor of the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible.
