Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15; Ephesians 4:17, 20-24; John 6:24-35 Today’s liturgy and the
Word of God present us with Jesus as the Bread of Life.Breadis a substance known and
used by every society on the face of the earth. It is a gift of God to humanity adapted
by the nature in order to be a source of nourishment. In the Old Testament we have
to God who took care of his people by giving them food for their survival. He gave
them Manna in the desert which was the type of divine bread placed before his chosen
people. In the New Testament Jesus calls himself the bread of Life and tells us that
those who eat him will live forever. Jesus presents himself as the person who wants
to be part of us. He is what the whole world needs, he satisfies all those who partake
of him, there isn’t a person on the world who can’t tolerate him, and there isn’t
a person who won’t enjoy him when they meet him. He tells the disciples that he is
the real bread we all need this bread that has come down from heaven and they have
to believe in him. To believe in a person is to make an investment of one’s whole
self. It is an act of faith, of trust and a letting go. It is much more than just
accepting what a person says as being true. Indeed, the person who comes to him will
never go hungry. In the first reading from the Book of Exodus God becomes the provider
when there was real lack of food for the people of Israel and they were afraid that
they may die, God comes to their aid giving them bread from heaven. In the second
reading Paul invites all to possess life eternal by giving up sin and selfishness.
He tells the Ephesians not to live an aimless life but a life centered on Jesus Today’s
First Reading from the Book of Exodus tells us about the bread from heaven given to
the Israelites by God when they were in the desert. God had miraculously brought them
out of the land of Egypt liberating them from slavery but they were unable to place
their full trust in the leaders God had given them. They were looking back towards
Egypt instead of facing the direction God had given them. The Pharaoh had been gathering
straw for his bricks and God had been gathering food to keep them alive. To give the
people every spiritual advantage God provides them with bread that surpasses anything
Egypt offered them. Manna was the gift that had come from God for them. For them it
was the perfect food for the journey. They were able to collect it in the morning
and move on towards the place God had prepared for them. The manna was a honeydew
excretion produced by two species of scale insect that infested the tamarisk thickets
of the area in the desert. God also provided them with quails to eat surpassing the
fleshpots of Egypt. The quail was a small migrating game bird that resembles the partridge
passing through the desert. But Manna also included the test in faith. The people
were instructed to rely on God each day for the food they needed. Any attempt of self-sufficiency
did not work for Manna got spoilt the next day, except on the Sabbath day. All this
was in response to the complaints that people made against God and Moses. God took
care of them and gave them physical food as well as the spiritual food. The Second
Reading Paul tells the Ephesians of the absolute condition that is required for spiritual
renewal, namely, the necessity to clothe themselves with the new self, the new life
that has been created in the likeness of God. Paul asks the Christians to put away
their former life, their old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, meaning weakness
of human nature. To put away one’s former life and to clothe oneself with the new
self belongs to God through their baptism. In the early days of the Church, the candidates
wouldsymbolically remove their old clothes, plunge into the water and then put on
new white clothing. This external sign signified an inner change, that the convert
had put aside his former life, to accept Christ through faith, and was now, in Christ,
beginning a new life. Here Paul uses three designations for our Savior: Lord, Christ,
Jesus. All three point to the authority of Jesus who teaches us how to live. Ultimately
it is God the Father who enables people to abandon their old way of life and be renewed
in Spirit. They can now live a life of righteousness and holiness dedicates to God
the father as Jesus was. The Gospel of today tells us what took place immediately
after the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and feeding the five thousand people.
Jesus escaped to the mountains to avoid people from making him their king. Jesus at
any time did not want to be a political king. Nor did he want the disciples to be
influenced by the ideas of the crowd. Hence he forces his disciples to cross the sea
by boat. The next morning, it did not take long for the crowd to realize that Jesus
had disappeared. The crowd then went looking him. As such, they set out to Capernaum
where Jesus and his disciples were known to resort. When they found Jesus on the other
side of the sea, they asked when he had come to that place. The first time they had
gone looking for him Jesus had compassion on them because they were like sheep without
a shepherd. Now the welcome wastotally different. He told them directly that it was
not out of love or devotion that they came to him. He confronted them saying they
had truly come not because of any signs they had seen but because they had seen the
miracle of loaves. They did not understand the meaning of what Jesus was doing with
regard to his teaching and the miracle. Perhaps they did not even want to understand;
they were just seeking their own immediate benefit. Jesus, through his humanity, was
representing the presence of God in the world. His presence indicated that God is
the source of all our needs: material needs, social needs, emotional needs, and spiritual
needs. The abundant feeding with the bread and fish was a sign of much deeper nourishment
that comes from God. The same God was ready to offer them more if they were ready
to listen and accept him. The crowd was working for ordinary food while Jesus was
offering them nourishment that brought with it eternal life. Theywere still not satisfied.
They asked for a sign which would give them a reason for believing in Jesus. The
Gospel passage of today unfolds around a series of questions that a crowd addressed
to Jesus. The central dynamic between Jesus and this crowd had been one of misunderstanding.
The opening scene presents the crowd in a bit of consternation because they had been
looking for Jesus and they could not find him. Eventually they did discover him at
Capernaum. Jesus was not impressed with the enthusiasm of the crowd. They were pursuing
Jesus because he gave them bread to eat and accused them of seeking him out only because
they got plenty to eat when he abundantly fed them. They had their own reason to follow
him and they missed the sign value of that amazing event. Jesus at this moment challenged
them by asking them to work for the bread that will last. Jesus indicated that a person
can often become preoccupied with various things and can have enough and more but
may not give sufficient time to the spiritual nature which can remain under nourished.
The Lord directedthem to discover for themselves the moments wherein theyought to
discover God and his place in their lives. These were the moments that were unique
and beyond the ordinary chores of life and that involved some amount of segregation
from the routine and earthly situations. He points out to them of the necessity of
replenishing their inner spirit. Jesus invited them to a spirit of happiness through
a deeper relationship with God and at the same time madethem come into contact with
their innermost and deep desires. He called to look for food that is spiritual which
would nourish their souls. Further in his discourse Jesus instructed the people
that they were not to work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures
forever, which the Son of Man would give them. Those Words of Jesus taken from Prophet
Isaiah were a call to work for eternal life. While one is called to work for earthly
bread, he is also called to work for eternal life. He admonished them that the earthly
bread, shall pass but the eternal life, shall remain forever. They found it difficult
to understand and they asked what they must do to perform the works of God. The reply
of Jesus was simple, that they have to believe in him whom the heavenly Father had
sent. Jesus in fact called them to faith and trust in him and his works. As Jesus
tried to enlighten the crowd regarding his life giving Divinity, the crowd argued
among themselves that Jesus had only multiplied earthly bread. Yet, through Moses,
God had given his people “bread from heaven.” These people failed to realize the prophetic
nature of the manna, the bread from Heaven. Still they asked him for the divine bread.
They could not grasp that Jesus was speaking of non-physical bread and that he could
give this heavenly Bread, they had not yet understood that Jesus had identified himself
as that Bread. But they had heard wrongly and they were still thinking of material
food. They were still seeing the multiplication of the loaves and fish in a purely
literal way. It is like the Samaritan woman at the well who wanted the “living” water
that Jesus said he could give her. She wanted an unending supply so that she would
not have to go to the well again. The crowd continued to misunderstand the deeper
level that Jesus was trying to get them to understand. They thought that the works
of God refer to something that can be accomplished by human effort. Jesus on the other
hand was telling them point blank that works of God refer to having faith in the one
that God sent, namely Jesus himself. When Jesus told the people “I am the Bread of
Life,” he used the words “I am” for the first time during his ministry on earth. In
those days, when those two words were spoken together in that particular order, they
implied that God was speaking. Those two words were so sacred that no one dared to
say them. It was forbidden to say them because they implied that one was God or His
equal. When Jesus used those words during His arrest in the garden, Judas, the police
from the chief priests and the Pharisees stepped back and fell to the ground. Yet,
Jesus used the words when He said, “I am the Bread of Life.” He was telling the people
that He was God, the Giver of Life.” Jesus concluded His discourse by saying that
“Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be
thirsty.” He is now the consoler, the God who cares and the one who looks after the
hungry. The crowd wanted Jesus to produce a sign that he truly the one sent by God.
The irony was that they totally missed the sign Jesus had just recently given them. Jesus
made a fresh attempt to break through the crowd’s misunderstanding by interpreting
their own reference to their ancestors receiving manna in the desert. Referring back
to the events narrated in the Book of Exodus concerning Manna, Jesus declared that
it was God and not Moses who provided that miraculous bread from heaven. He extended
his argument by saying that the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven
to give life to the world. Finally, in response to the crowd’s request to receive
this bread, Jesus made his final move by proclaiming that he himself is the bread
of life that will totally nourish anyone who would believe in him. At this point the
bread of life refers to the reality of God present in the person of Jesus. When Jesus
says he is the Bread of Life, we generally think of the Eucharist. But what Jesus
said was much more than mere Eucharist. With the words, Jesus is the Bread of Life;
we primarily mean that Jesus is the source of a full life. If we follow him, we will
know the experience of a life which is full of truth, of love, of compassion, of friendship,
of justice, of freedom, of peace. We will become people who are “fully human, fully
alive”. We will become not just persons but intra-persons, inter-persons, and meta-persons.
In other words, we will have good relations with ourselves, with the people around
us, with people everywhere. We become fully one with Jesus. At the same time we must
realize that the Word of God is real food. St Jerome tells us that not to know the
Scripture is not to know Jesus. Secondly the community with Jesus the head is the
bread of life. Further his presence in the day to events is nourishing us too. His
glory is available in the universe. In today’s reading we hear of the lack of faith
of those Galileans, of their utter worldliness and their total lack of interest in
their future life. Jesus explained to them how wrong their attitude is towards life.
They were all the concentrating on the things of present life and never bothered about
their future life. They were looking for the earthly bread while Jesus was offering
them the heavenly bread. They were holding on strongly to the desert experience of
their ancestors but did not bother about the present life. Jesus offered them the
future life and invited them to believe in him, the true bread of life. Aswe continue
with the celebration of the Holy Mass, let us thank the Lord for his gift of the Eucharist,
the Bread of Life. The Lord God has blessed us richly with the Gift of Life to guide
us in the way, the truth and the life. He tells us that whoever comes to him will
never be hungry, and whoever believes in him will never be thirsty. One day Satan
and Jesus were having a conversation. Satan had just come from the Garden of Eden,
and he was gloating and boasting. “Yes, sir, I just caught the world full of people
down there. Set me a trap used bait I knew they couldn’t resist. Got them all!” “What
are you going to do with them?” Jesus asked. Satan replied, “Oh, I’m going to have
fun! I’m going to teach them how to marry and divorce each other, how to hate and
abuse each other, how to drink and smoke and curse. I’m going to teach them how to
invent guns and bombs and kill each other. I’m really going to have fun!” “And what
will you do when you get done with them?” Jesus asked. “Oh, I’ll kill them,” Satan
glared proudly. “How much do you want for them?” Jesus asked. “Oh, you don’t want
those people. They aren’t any good. Why, you’ll take them and they’ll just hate you.
They’ll spit on you, curse you and kill you!! You don’t want those people!!” “How
much?” He asked again. Satan looked at Jesus and sneered, “All your tears, and all
your blood.” Jesus said, “DONE!” Then He paid the price. Fr Eugene Lobo S.J. Mangalore,
India