Today’s Gospel continues the theme of Jesus as bread of life, which we have heard for the past several Sundays. This time in the liturgical year is an opportunity to return to the New Testament understanding of Jesus being our food and sustenance. Through this, we may glean a better understanding of the importance of the Sacraments, not least that of the Holy Eucharist.
The crowds found it difficult to understand That Jesus was the bread from heaven. More importantly, many knew him when he grew up, and this seemed in total opposition to what his teaching suggested.
There was, yes, a certain ambiguity to his teachings, an element in which those listening must join up the dots. After all, we feel this today when we try to follow him, despite the help of the Gospels and centuries of Church tradition. What would it have been like two thousand years ago, when Jesus’s words were first emerging in a world of Judaism?
But this is simply another opportunity to have faith, and to listen. Listening to the words of the Gospel is not an easy thing. We hear the words, and they immediately link us to our preconceptions and misconceptions. To truly listen, in the sense that Jesus asks us to, is a longer-term venture which demands concentration, but also poverty. Poverty in the sense of humility and acquiescence. We must listen, despite ourselves, and react to his words even if they challenge us to the core.
It was Christ’s teaching about being bread from heaven which the crowd must eat in order to inherit eternal life that led many to abandon him. Even today, many people will not believe the miracle, though it is repeated throughout the world many thousands of times.
As we navigate the week ahead, may we develop ears to hear, and truly strive to comprehend those words: ‘Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and
they are dead; but this is the bread that comes down from heaven,
so that a man may eat it and not die.
I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.
Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever.’ May we cone to Mass in a more fruitful way, inspired and nourished by his Body and Blood.
GOSPEL
The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John 6:41-51
Glory to you, O Lord.
The Jews were complaining to each other about Jesus, because he had said,
I am the bread that came down from heaven.‘
‘Surely this is Jesus son of Joseph’ they said. ‘We know his father and mother.
How can he now say, “I have come down from heaven” ?’
Jesus said in reply: ‘Stop complaining to each other. No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me,
and I will raise him up at the last day.
It is written in the prophets:
They will all be taught by God,
and to hear the teaching of the Father,
and learn from it, is to come to me.
Not that anybody has seen the Father,
except the one who comes from God: he has seen the Father.
I tell you most solemnly, everybody who believes has eternal life.
I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and
they are dead; but this is the bread that comes down from heaven,
so that a man may eat it and not die.
I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.
Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.’
The Gospel of the Lord
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.