The Word of God and the Bread of Life Gospel: John 6:51-58
Fr. Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF Claretian Missionaries
This passage is the concluding part of the discourse on the bread of life taught by Jesus in the synagogue of Capernaum after the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. The people saw the sign; they decided to take him by force to make him king (Jn 6:14-15).
Why do these amazed and admiring crowds seek Jesus? They are moved by an immature faith. They are interested in Jesus just because they think he is able to satisfy through miracles their material needs. Mature faith is something else. It is that of those who understand that Jesus does not perform miracles to impress but to introduce a deeper reality.
In Capernaum, the crowd does not understand. Jesus attempts to explain the mystery. He starts presenting himself as the bread of life, which comes from heaven (Jn 6:33-35). He declares that whoever listens to him assimilates his message, his gospel, feeds himself of the words of life. His statement is not listened to.
For the Jews, the bread that came down from heaven is the manna (Ps 78:24) and the food that nourishes is the word of God (Is 55:1-3). How can “the son of Joseph claim such right?”—they ask indignantly. Instead of mitigating his claim, Jesus makes an even more surprising statement. The bread to eat is not only his doctrine but his own flesh. “The bread I shall give is my flesh, and I will give it for the life of the world.” These are the opening words of today’s passage (v. 51).
Eating this God-made-flesh means recognizing that the revelation of God comes into the world through “the carpenter’s son” and to welcome this wisdom coming from heaven.
Even after this clarification, however, the scandalous aspect of the proposal of Jesus remains. How can one “eat his person”? The shocked reaction of the listeners is understandable and justified: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (v. 52). They understand that he is not only referring to the spiritual assimilation of God’s revelation but also to a real “eating.” What does he mean? The discourse on the Eucharist is inserted here.
Jesus gives the meaning of the sacrament of Eucharist. This is the “fount and summit of all Christian life.” We know that, for lack of priests, on Sunday many Christian communities do not gather around the table of the bread of the Eucharist, but around the Word of God. We are confident that they receive an abundance of life from this unique food available to them.
Eucharist, it must be emphasized, is sacrament—that really makes the Risen Christ present. It does not substitute the faith in the word of Christ. Before receiving the Eucharistic bread, it is necessary to listen to and meditate on a Gospel passage. The reading of the word of God is the essential premise.
Just three dense verses constitute the Gospel passage today. They would be enough to correct the distorted image of God still present in the minds of many Christians—that of the stern and inflexible judge—and to open our hearts to trust in his love.
“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him may not be lost” (v. 16). It can be considered the summit reached by the biblical revelation on the meaning of creation, life and human destiny.
John, who has seen with his own eyes and touched with his hands the Word of life (1 Jn 1:1), arrives to say, “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8); love that manifested itself in the only begotten Son’s gift to the world. He has not only given him in the Incarnation; he delivered him into the hands of men on the cross. There he has shown his true face, without any veil.
Paul shows that he understood this miracle of love. When, writing to the Romans, he says: “But see how God manifested his love for us, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).
How should humans respond to this love? One thing only: that they trust, abandons themselves in his arms—as does the bride with the groom—who hands herself to him, immense love, in the certainty of meeting life.
When we think of God who became one of us in Jesus of Nazareth, sometimes we make the mistake of considering this fact as an episode, a sad parenthesis of his existence. He came among us, remained a little more than thirty years, suffered and died on the cross, then returned to heaven, far away, happy to have retaken the former state.
That is not so. Our God took on our human nature and remains forever one of us. He has not pulled himself out of our world. He is and remains always the Emmanuel, the God-with-us (Mt 28:20).
In the Gospel of John, Jesus does not appear as a judge who condemns, but only as a savior of persons: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world; instead, through him, the world is to be saved” (v. 17). “For I have come, not to condemn the world, but to save the world” (Jn 12:47).
The third and final verse of today’s passage is read in this perspective. In it, the responsibility of each person in front of God’s love is highlighted. “Whoever believes in him will not be condemned. He who does not believe is already condemned” (v. 18).
Today we are called to welcome the joy that God offers, but we can also commit the folly of delaying or even refusing his embrace. He expects an immediate “yes” from persons because every moment spent in sin, in the rejection of his love, is a wasted opportunity.
At the end of life, when God “will test the work of everyone” (1 Cor 3:13), the conformity or discrepancy of each person’s action with the person of Christ will appear clear. God then surely welcomes all in his arms, though some will be forced to admit to having badly managed, hopelessly wasted the unique opportunity that was offered to them. The work of this man—warns Paul—“will become ashes; although he will be saved, but it will be as if passing through fire” (1 Cor 3:15).
Jesus promised his disciples that he would not leave them alone and that he would send the Spirit. Today we celebrate the feast of this gift of the Risen One.
While John places the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Easter to show that the Spirit is the gift of the Risen One, Luke places the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost. Pentecost was a very ancient Jewish holiday, celebrated fifty days after the Feast of the Passover. It commemorated the arrival of the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. The Law was given there. Luke wants to teach that the Spirit has replaced the old law and became the new law for the Christian.
Here’s what the law of the Spirit is: it is the new heart; it is God’s life. When it enters in a person, it transforms him and from bramble, it becomes a fruitful tree, able to spontaneously produce the works of God.
When a person is filled with the Spirit, something unheard of happens in him. He loves with the love of God himself. From that moment “he does not need someone to teach him” (1 Jn 2:27); he won’t require another law. John comes to say that the man animated by the Spirit becomes even incapable of sinning: “Those born of God do not sin, for the seed of God remains in them; they cannot sin because they are born of God” (1 Jn 3:9).
And the thunder, the wind, the fire? In the book of Exodus these phenomena accompanied the gift of the old law. “All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning and heard the blast of the trumpet and saw the mountain smoking” (Ex 20:18). The rabbis said that at Sinai, on the day of Pentecost, when God gave the Law, his words took the form of seventy tongues of fire, indicating that the Torah was destined to all peoples (thought to be exactly seventy at that time). Luke uses the same imagery during the gift of the Spirit—the new law. If he wanted to be understood he had to use the same images.
And the many languages spoken by the apostles? Probably Luke refers to a very common phenomenon in the early church. After receiving the Spirit, the believers began to praise God in a state of exaltation. As if in ecstasy, they uttered strange words in other languages.
Luke has used this phenomenon in a symbolic sense to teach about the universality of the church. The Spirit is a gift meant for all persons and all peoples. Faced with this gift of God, all barriers of language, race and tribe collapse. On the day of Pentecost, the opposite of what happened at Babel occurred (Gn 11:1-9). People began to misunderstand and to distance from each other. Here the Spirit puts into action an opposite movement. He brings together those who are scattered.
Whoever lets himself be guided by the word of the gospel and by the Spirit speaks a language that everyone understands and everyone joins in: the language of love. It is the Spirit who transforms mankind into one family where all understand and love each other.
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