If you are reading these words, hopefully, you joined in reading last Sunday’s reflection as well and are back to continue the journey through John 6 that we started last week. If just joining, you can go back to last Sunday’s post, July 28, read, and catch up. I also hope that you spent or will spend some time, slowly, meditatively, and prayerfully engaging with the words of John 6 at your own pace.
We left off last week with the crowd that had gathered around Jesus feeling amazed to have experienced, witnessed, and have eaten their fill from the miracle of Jesus multiplying the few pieces of bread and fish available from a boy’s willingness to give of what he had. We join the crowd this week having come to realize that Jesus had left them in the evening in a surprising way. They witnessed the disciples crossing Galilee in a boat but not Jesus. They get into boats themselves and follow. Seek him out and find him on the other side they did.
Having satisfied the physical needs of the people, they want more, and Jesus is going to build on the miracle of the multiplication to present them with the more they aren’t even aware of how hungry that they are for. The seed of the teaching of the spiritual food that he wants to nourish them with, he actually planted with his apostles earlier when they first asked him how to pray.
In the prayer he taught them, what we well recognize as the Our Father, there is an interesting line that relates to today’s discourse. This prayer we recite at every Mass, and which has been passed on generation after generation since the time of Jesus has the familiar phrase: “give us this day our daily bread” (Mt 6:11).
The translation of daily from the Greek ton arton ton epiousios, several Church Fathers have translated as, super, substantial bread. Jesus was teaching his disciples then as well as each generation up to an including us today, to ask his Father to give us super, substantial bread. This is the bread that has been transformed, that has been transubstantiated, bread that at its very core is no longer bread, but the Body and Blood of Jesus. This is the Eucharist we receive at each Mass. Jesus was paving the way for his disciples in teaching them this prayer and building on it as he guided the crowd in today’s reading when he said to the thousands gathered around him, “I am the bread of life”.
The bread that the people consumed from Jesus’ multiplication sustained them physically. Jesus is now moving beyond the physical to their deeper spiritual hunger as he tells them not to seek food that perishes but to seek food that “endures for eternal life” (Jn 6:27). The people then referred to the manna that Moses provided for their ancestors in the desert and asked what sign he would give. Jesus clarified that God provided for those in the desert and he would do so again. “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world” (Jn 6:33).
They asked Jesus to give them “this bread always.” And Jesus is more than willing to oblige as he begins the pivot of pivots when he said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst” (Jn 6:35). The reaction of the people to this statement we will explore next week.
What we want to meditate upon this week is the gift of this super, substantial bread that we are blessed to receive at each Mass. Through the gift of the Mass we are able to participate in the divine dance of love that has always been, is, and ever will be danced. This is the divine communion of the Father giving all that he is to the Son, the Son receiving and returning back to the Father all he has received and is, and this infinite sharing between them, the love given and received between them is the Holy Spirit.
All that we are and have is a gift from God. In the Mass we give a little bit of what we have received, represented in the bread and wine given to the priest at the altar, represented in the gift of the money we offer, the prayers and intentions we bring. We give our little to the Father and he receives what we have given. He then through the words of the Son spoken at each Mass by the priest and the sending of the Holy Spirit gives to us his Son made present again on the altar as the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ.
We then receive Jesus and consume him, are transformed by him, such that we become what we eat. We become Christified, deified, we become one with Jesus in his divinity. Having received the Bread of life, we meditate on the gift of this miracle and then when we are sent at the end of Mass to continue this dance of love. We are sent out to give to others the love we have received.
Photo: “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my Body, which will be given up for you.” I am blessed to say these words of Jesus and participate in the dance of the Trinity as I celebrate Mass each day!
Spiritual Stepping Stones 