My Dear People,

Some of Jesus’ listeners objected to His claim to be the bread from heaven because they knew His earthly family (6:41-41). Alluding to the book of Exodus, Jesus treats their response as rebellious grumbling (6:43). The Father works within people by teaching them and drawing them to faith in Jesus (6:44-45). Jesus encourages His followers to yield to God’s teachings and thus, come to the Son, the only one who knows and reveals the Father. By believing in Jesus and receiving Him, one receives the gift of eternal life. (6:46-47). 

John identified some within Jesus’ audience as His neighbors. They challenged Jesus’ claim to have come down from heaven, because they knew of His father, Joseph, and mother, Mary. They are thinking primarily in earthly terms and not the heavenly terms to which Jesus is summoning them (6:27).

Jesus does not regard these as innocent questions but as murmuring. This Greek word describes the rebellious grumbling of the Israelites against the Lord (and Moses) in the wilderness (Exod. 17:3; Num. 14:26-35). In effect, Jesus is telling His listeners that their hearts are hardened like those who murmured in the desert, and to whom Moses declared, “Your grumbling is not against us, but against the Lord” (Exod. 16:8 LXX). 

Jesus again points to the truth;  No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him on the last day.  Developing His earlier remarks about God’s work in 6:29,37, Jesus speaks of the Father as working to bring people to faith in Him. He instructs them to yield to His “work of God” and so receive the gift of eternal life through faith in Him.

Jesus supports this claim with the prophets, freely citing Isa. 54:13: They shall all be taught by God.  Being taught by God involves listening to the Father, yielding to Him, and thus being brought to Jesus. The Father’s action is secret and hidden, but it has an attracting power to bring us to the Son, the one who is from God, and who alone has seen the Father.  Only the “Son, who is at the Father’s side” (1:18) can truly reveal the Father (see Mat. 11:25-27).

Jesus distinguishes the connection between receiving Him in faith and receiving the gift of eternal life: Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. All people have access to God’s gift of eternal life through Jesus. We receive this gift through faith in Him. 

Jesus spoke of “food that endures for eternal life” (6:27) and then was challenged by the crowd to perform a sign greater than the manna (from heaven while in the desert) (6:30-31). Jesus went on to speak of the “bread of God. . . which comes down from heaven” (6:33) and identified Himself as this heavenly “bread of life” (6:35). His discourse now crescendos in the revelation that the bread from heaven that gives eternal life is the crucified and glorified flesh of Jesus Himself (6:48-51). With strong realism, Jesus teaches that He gives this very flesh (cont’d on pg. 4)     as nourishment to believers in the Eucharist, which is the sacrament of His body and blood (6:53-58).

Returning to the themes of manna and life-giving bread, Jesus compares Himself as the bread of life with the manna. The manna was a providential gift from the Lord to sustain the Israelites in the wilderness. But despite the wondrous nature, the manna did not give eternal life: Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died. But the bread of life from heaven does what the manna could not. It gives eternal life. So, whoever eats this bread will live forever. 

The food that gives immortality is an allusion to the tree of life in the garden of Eden. According to Genesis, the tree of life’s fruit could give immortality. But, after their sin, God expelled Adam and Eve from Eden to keep them from eating this food (Gen 3:22-23). 

Yet, Jesus now says that anyone who eats the bread He gives will live forever.

 Jesus opens the way to paradise and offers the food that gives immortality. 

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Vincent Clemente