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Gospel: John 6: 51-58
Jesus said to the crowds:
“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.”
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Jesus 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.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
For my flesh is true food,
and my blood is true drink.
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.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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When I was a little kid, I had lots of stuffed animals.
A few of them had Velcro strips on their backs. You could open them up from behind and turn them inside out, transforming them into a globe. The globe would reveal where that particular animal was from.
For example, I learned pandas came from China; penguins from Antarctica.
These stuffed animals sparked my imagination, fueling a hunger inside of me to know more about the world around me.
So, I devised a plan.
One day I started digging a hole in my backyard. I was determined to dig my way to China, a land of pandas, bamboo, and apparently a very big wall.
I didn’t get too far before Mom discovered me, breaking the bad news: I wasn’t making it to China that day.
But that curiosity – that desire for the truth – has never left.
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We find this same type of curiosity unfolding in today’s Gospel.
For the last four weeks, we’ve been reading chapter six of John’s Gospel, which is commonly referred to as the “Bread of Life discourse.”
It begins with Jesus feeding a crowd of thousands in the multiplication of the loaves. Then he leads them to acknowledge a deeper hunger – the hunger for truth, for meaning, for love.
The Lord declares that he is the Source that can satisfy that hunger. “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger…whoever eats this bread will live forever and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
The crowds are stunned. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they ask.
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Seeing their irked reaction, the Lord doubles down, using even more specific and graphic language than before.
Whereas Jesus initially invited the crowds to “eat” his flesh, he now switches to a more particular verb, “gnaw; chew; chomp,” emphasizing the physical nature of his command.
Unwilling to dig any deeper, people leave him in droves. They do not yet understand that the “living bread come down from heaven” the Lord promises will be the Eucharist; we do not receive his flesh and bones, as it were. Rather, his Resurrected Presence.
So, Jesus is left alone with his disciples, prompting him to ask them, “Do you also want to leave?”
This is the greatest test of his disciples’ faith thus far. If they cannot accept his words now – even without understanding – then how much harder will it be to accept the scandal of the cross?
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Why does Jesus insist on this gift of the Eucharist? Why is belief in his Word not enough?
To understand his logic, we must dig deep into the Old Testament.
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While there are many connections that can be made between the Old Testament and the Eucharist, I will focus on the first, which happens in the Book of Genesis.
How do Adam and Eve break their communion with God?
Through an act of eating.
As Satan the serpent slithers in the Garden of Eden, he convinces Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. She then shares that fruit with Adam.
This breaks God’s commandment first given to Adam: “You are free to eat from any of the trees in the garden, except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it, you shall die.”
Christians understand the breaking of this commandment to be the origin of sin. Once humanity’s relationship with God was broken, “all hell broke loose,” as it were.
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Jesus reverses the curse of Eden in today’s Gospel, promising a new, final covenant between God and his people also through an act of eating. “Whoever eats this bread will live forever,” he says, “and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
We see this promise fulfilled at the Last Supper, when the Lord takes a loaf of bread and a cup of wine, telling his disciples plainly, “This is my Body… this is my Blood. Do this – eat this, drink this – in memory of me.”
Just as Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge in disobedience, so at Mass we consume the Eucharist in obedience, restoring the communion with God that once was lost.
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This is a lot to digest, as it were.
But unlike the crowds, who leave the Lord in disbelief, may our love for Jesus inspire us to continue digging for the Truth until we, “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”
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Image credits: (1) Mother of Divine Providence (2) thearcheologist.org (3) St. John the Baptist Catholic Church