The name Deuteronomy means second telling. It is a retelling ofthe escape from Egypt, the wandering in the desert, and God’s making of the covenant at Sinai with Israel. The retelling has a purpose—to call a new generation to keep up the covenant relationship with God.
The retelling asks a new generation to imagine they are the ones God leads through the desert for 40 years and tests with hunger and thirst. The people’s hunger and thirst is for more than food and water. Their hunger is for God, whose creative word nourishes their spirits and gives them more life than water.
Israel’s testing
Moses spoke to the people: “Remember how for 40 years now the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness, in order to test you by affliction and find out whether you intended to keep God’s commandments. God let you be afflicted with hunger and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your ancestors, in order to show you that one does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
“Remember your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery; who guided you through the vast
Deuteronomy 8.2-3, 14-16
and terrible wilderness with its poisonous snakes and scorpions, its parched and waterless ground; who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna, a food unknown to your ancestors.”
- What words of Sunday’s gospel and first reading do you find especially nourishing and life- giving?
- What helps you to stay alive spiritually in our culture?