19th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

There’s nothing as tasty as cinnamon bread, the kind with powdered sugar on the top. It’s best toasted and slathered with butter. But just plain, right off the loaf, is good enough.

In the cafeteria of a Catholic elementary school, the nuns announced that there would be a special cinnamon bread treat for lunch. The bread slices were on a large tray so all the students could help themselves. Fearing that the first kids in line might load up, depriving the others, the nuns put up a sign by the bread tray: “Take only one, God is watching.”

Farther along the lunch line, at the other end of the table, was an unlabeled tray of chocolate chip cookies. One child whispered to another, “Take all the cookies you want. God is watching the bread.”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us he is the bread of life. We can take all the bread we want. God is watching.

            Deacon Dick Folger