By Katie Patrizio
Our Gospel this Sunday begins with a loaded verb: murmured. “The Jews murmured about Jesus because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’” The word immediately calls to mind the scene from the sixteenth chapter of Exodus: “On the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt […] the whole congregation of the people of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron.”
Why are the people murmuring? They go on to tell us themselves: “Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” In other words, the Israelites are wishing they’d never been freed from slavery because, after all, slavery came with some perks (e.g., bread to the full).
In our own lives it’s important for us to be honest about the positive byproducts of our bad habits and disordered desires. Satan never tempts with outright evil, St. Thomas Aquinas says, but with half-goods. My indulgent diet self-soothes after a stressful day of work. My penchant for comparison that devolves into gossip boosts my self-esteem. My online tirade about the current political situation makes me feel like I can help stem the tide of a culture gone awry when I’m scared to imagine how the world might look in a few years.
At the end of the day, the Enemy is a haggler. “If you give me this, I’ll give you that.” In Egypt, I trade my freedom for a full belly and I put on the shackles of a slave so that, for a moment, I can be free of that nagging feeling of hunger.
Like any other problem, the first step to overcoming it is awareness. Ask yourself, what positive byproduct does this behavior give me? Once we identify the currency we’re trading in then we can ask ourselves the bigger question: Is it even worth it?