The long “Bread of Life Discourse,” which fills all of Chapter Six in John’s Gospel, has a definite Eucharistic tone overall, especially in its last part, from which we read an excerpt today. The liturgical context of the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ in no way distorts the sense of this passage. On the contrary, this reading casts light on the meaning and scope of the celebration.
It was after feeding the multitude with “five barley loaves and two fish” that Jesus gave this discourse. This whole crowd —“about five thousand in number”— followed Jesus “across the Sea of Galilee”because of the “signs” and cures worked before their eyes. As evening came, they realised their poverty: nothing to eat and, in this desert, not the slightest possibility of finding bread for such a mob. For their part, the disciples were unable to cope with the situation. “Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter” noticed “a boy here who has five loaves and two fish.” But this discovery only made their plight more evident: “What good are these for so many?” It was with this nothing that Jesus fed the crowd. All ate to their hearts’ content, and the leftovers filled twelve baskets.
We are not surprised to see that such a miracle aroused the enthusiasm of the crowd. But Jesus knew why and escaped. The next day he said, “you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” He then undertook to teach them why they had to seek him. “The food that perishes” is not worth all the trouble of crossing the lake and looking for it on the other side. One thing alone counts: to “work…..for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.” Concretely, what is needed is to believe in the one sent by the Father. It is Jesus, “The bread of God…..which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” “I am the bread of life….I am the living bread….whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
This insistence, this repetition of the words. “I am,” concentrates attention more and more on Jesus, on his person. The bread he speaks of is not like the bread of God, through the mediation of Moses, provided for his people during their march through the wilderness: “Your ancestors ate the manner in the desert, but they died.” “I am the living bread……whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” This solemn affirmation, toward which the whole discourse leads, is nonetheless surprising. Jesus is personally the bread, the “living bread.” Whoever eats it “will live forever.”: It is impossible not to understand these words and locutions in an immediately realistic sense. John made this clear by reporting the hearers’ reactions: “How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?” Echoes of this question still resound in the hearts of all believers, and with a special force in the congregation celebrating the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. Yes, it is “this man,” Jesus of Nazareth, who gives us his flesh to eat as he has “given” his life “for” the salvation of the world. “This man” is indeed the Son of God, who, “came down from heaven,” who “became flesh / and made his dwelling among us.” (Jn 1:14)Faith in the Eucharist goes hand in hand with faith in the incarnation; Jesus is really the bread “for the life of the world” for he is true God and true human being. The reality of his humanity——“this man”——founds the realism of the Eucharist, true Body of Christ, dead and now living at the right hand of the Father, true food.
The statements that follow, and in which Jesus invests all his authority, forcefully insist:” “Amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” The repetition of the same words, whose meaning is very realistic —“to eat,” “to drink,” “flesh,” “blood,” “food”— nips in the bud any interpretation that would see in these affirmations a metaphorical or allegorical way of speaking. The Lord gives his body, “given for us,” to eat, his blood, “shed for us,” to drink.
In the Eucharist, we receive, under the “signs” —the sacrament — of bread and wine, which after the prayers of consecration, becomes the Body and Blood of the risen Christ, eternally living with the Father. It is truly his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, which we receive in holy communion. It is by virtue of this new condition that he can be our food under this form. It is also because of this new condition that when eating this bread and drinking this wine transformed by the Spirit into the Body and Blood of Christ, we participate already in the life that the Son shares with the Father: this same life circulates in us. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the `Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” The Eucharist establishes with Christ and through him with the Father such a close bond that it is comparable to the one that unites the Persons of the Trinity. This life already communicated here on earth must grow into eternal life. The Eucharist, “remedy of immortality, antidote against death, but for eternal life in Jesus Christ,” is the paschal sacrament par excellence. To participate in the Eucharist — “the mystery of faith” is to proclaim the resurrection of Christ and to receive the pledge of it.
“In the same way the bread that comes from earth, after having received the invocation, is no longer ordinary bread, but Eucharist, made up of two things, one earthly, the other heavenly, so our bodies which participate in the Eucharist are no longer corruptible, since they have the hope of the resurrection.”
During the forty years of the march in the wilderness after the Exodus, God fed his people with manna, “a food unknown to [their] fathers,” and gave them water sprung from the rock. As we hear in our first reading today. Thanks to this food falling from heaven and to this providential drink, the people survived until their entrance into the Promised Land. The miraculous character of these events remained vivid in the collective memory of the believers, as the Bible attests. But by meditating on God’s guidance, people understood better and better that the lesson to be learned was that they must gain an increased awareness of an infinitely more vital need than that for earthly food. “Not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord.” From him and him alone can we expect the life that does not inexorably end in death.
As a new Moses, Jesus also fed the crowds who, seeing “the signs he was performing on the sick,” followed him into the desert where there was nothing to eat. They would have willingly made a king of this man who saw to their needs. Jesus eluded them by leaving the place, but they ferreted him out. The discourse that he then addressed to them reveals to us the meaning of the “sign” he worked. He was sent by “the living Father” in order to be the food that makes us live forever. Yes, he is the true bread “that came down from heaven.” We must eat his flesh, and drink his blood given “for the life of the world.” What lucky, privileged people we are.
“The Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” The bread we break and the cup we share are
“a communion in the `body and blood of Christ dead and risen.” HAPPY FEAST!
