The Living Bread [August 19, 2012]

The Sunday Gospel [August 19, 2012]

John 6:51-58

51I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” 52The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?” 53Jesus said to them, “Amen, 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. 54Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. 55For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. 57Just 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. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” 59These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Reflection

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” ` v. 51

Saint Augustine of Hippo once said that God is everything for the human being: if a person is hungry, God is bread; if one is thirsty, God is water; if in darkness, God is light; if naked God is a robe of immortality.

In becoming “flesh,” a human being, Jesus has become like us in all things except sin. He has also become all things to all. The evangelist John points out in his Gospel: to the “searcher” Nicodemus, Jesus reveals heavenly things (3:13); to the thirsty Samaritan woman, he offers a spring of water welling up to eternal life (4:14); to the woman caught in adultery, he is the personification of Mercy (8:11); to those in darkness, he is Light of the world (8:12); to the lost, he is the Good Shepherd (10:11); and to the dead Lazarus, he is the Resurrection and the Life (11:25).

Today’s Gospel reading points to Jesus as food or nourishment. This is the high point of John’s presentation of Jesus as the Bread of Life. It began with the feeding of the multitude on the mountain and Jesus’ subsequent invitation to the crowd not to be content with food that simply satisfies physical hunger. Just as Jesus had invited the Samaritan woman to ask for water that would quench her spiritual thirst, so Jesus asks the crowd to ask for the “bread from heaven” that would satisfy their deeper hunger. A human being, after all, does not live on bread alone. He has a “life with God” and for this spiritual life he is to be nourished by another kind of bread, which Jesus alone can give.

The evangelist presents Jesus as the Bread of Life under two aspects. First, Jesus is bread as the Word of God, as the rabbi who reveals the mystery and the will of the Father. Jesus is like the personified Wisdom who offers a rich banquet for those who lack understanding (First Reading). We know that the food and drink offered by “Lady Wisdom” are none other than the Torah, God’s revelation to the chosen people. And Jesus is this definitive revelation.

But Jesus is also bread in the sense of his declaration in today’s Gospel: his flesh is real food and his blood is real drink. And he invites everyone to partake of himself, if they want to have eternal life.

The Jews take his words literally and so they are aghast: “How can he give his flesh to eat?” Jesus does not say here how this true food and this true drink will be given. But neither does he say that he was misunderstood. Indeed, his flesh is real food and his blood real drink. And yet those who partake of him do not become cannibals. The “sign” will come at Jesus’ “hour,” during the last meal when he takes the bread and turns it into his body, and when he takes the wine and turns it into his blood. In so doing, those who share the bread and wine in the Eucharist truly partake the body and blood of the Lord. Saint Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, points this out clearly: “The reality of his flesh and his blood leaves no room for doubt, both according to the Lord’s teaching and our faith. We are speaking of true flesh and true blood. When we receive and absorb these substances, they put us in Christ and put Christ in us. Is this not the truth? Perhaps it is not true for those who do not recognize the true God in Christ. But he is in us, through his flesh, and we are in him; and with him, what we are is in God.”

Reflection Credits: Fr. Gil A. Alinsangan, SSP, On the Way to the Cross

Source: The Reflection is from Bro. Abel Navarro (you can visit his blog at http://myblogabelnavarroabel.blogspot.com/).