By Fr. Mark Mary, MFVA
How come we never see “John 6″ written on any poster boards at football games? Catholics should be right there next to the guy with the John 3:16 sign. John’s Gospel chapter 6 gives the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist in the clearest of terms. The Eucharist is, according to Vatican II, the source and summit of the Christian life. It is the food that sustains us and gives us strength. It is our most intimate communion with God. The Blessed Sacrament fosters that communion, and deepens it each time we receive Him under the sacramental signs of bread and wine. All the other Sacraments are ordered to the Eucharist, “For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1324).
We are told early in John’s Gospel that Jesus worked miraculous signs so the people would believe in him. (cf. Jn 2:11) At the wedding feast of Cana, He performed the miraculous changing of the water into wine. The passage says that this first miracle of Christ, manifested His Glory. The Father glorifies the Son, after His passion, death and resurrection. The Father raises the Son into His Glory. Revelation 19:7 speaks of the wedding feast of the lamb, where Jesus is the lamb and the bridegroom. The Church is His bride, and heaven is “a great wedding feast of the lamb.” The old covenant and prophets describe Israel as the bride that God is drawing into a nuptial union with Himself. Jesus, by his incarnation, has united Himself in a mysterious way to every man. At the end of time, when Christ comes in glory there will be a great consummation of this union of Christ with His Church, and all of creation will be transformed.
Jesus is at a wedding. The people run out of wine, and, at the request of His mother, He changes the water into wine. He is manifesting His glory, thereby, linking His heavenly existence with a wedding feast. There we will drink the wine of the new covenant, His body and blood. A nuptial union is formed by two becoming one flesh, a giving of oneself to the other. This is the image of the union that God has with us; He gives us His flesh and blood under the sacramental signs of bread and wine to incorporate us into His mystical body.
Some of the other signs in John’s Gospel are: the cure of the royal official’s son; the cure of the paralytic at the pool with five porticoes. In John 6, Jesus performs two signs. He multiplies the loaves and the fish, and He walks on water. Two dramatic miracles that most surely grabbed the attention of the people, but He does not perform these miracles merely to dazzle the people or to establish a strictly worldly kingdom that can satisfy every human need. In John chapter 20, our Lord tells us the reason for the signs: “…that you may [come to] believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.” (Jn 20:31)
Our Lord wants us to go further, past the sign, not to stop at the power of the miracle but to believe in Him. To believe in Him means to have life to the full, His life within us. When Jesus multiplies the loaves and the fish, He is preparing the people to receive His teaching on the Eucharist. As He feeds the crowds with earthly food, He will feed the world with the spiritual nourishment of His own body and blood. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes “prefigure the superabundance of this unique bread of his Eucharist.”
This miracle clearly catches the attention of the people. Many are looking for a prophet, a messiah that will liberate them from the occupation of the Roman Empire. They understandably want their freedom. Surely a messiah who could provide the material force necessary to overthrow the Romans would be extremely popular. After He multiplies the loaves and the fish, St. John writes: “When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!” Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the hills by himself.” (Jn 6:14-15)
The miraculous sign is not about earthly power. Yes, He is going to feed the world, but with the ‘bread of life.’ He chastises the people because they are seeking Him “because [they] you ate your fill of the loaves.” (Jn 6:26) He tells them to labor not for perishable food but for food that endures to eternal life. They are seeking Him not in faith but because they are hungry again. He is trying to get them to look beyond the miraculous sign and not stop there by making Him simply a “bread king”. His kingdom is not of this world. He inaugurates His kingdom by His coming into the world, but the fullness of the kingdom is not here. As Christians, we work to solve the problems of the world, but our Lord does not promise us a utopian existence down here. In fact, He promises us persecutions and struggles as we strive for the eternal life that our Lord promises.
The people have seen many incredible signs. Surely, they heard about His walking on the water during the storm and the various healings. But it is never “enough”, if there is no belief in Him. Jesus exhorts them to believe in Him who God has sent to them. During the miraculous walking on the water, He identifies Himself by using the Divine name: I AM. This is the name that God revealed to Moses and was not to be spoken. He is exhorting them to have faith in Him because He is about to give them a “hard” teaching. So hard, in fact, that many of His followers will abandon Him because of it.
The people want another sign that Jesus is the One sent by God. The sign they ask for is the one that Moses gave them 1300 years earlier: manna from heaven. Moses was the yardstick that all the prophets after him were measured by. His teaching, the way he was called by God, etc, was to be the template to determine who was a prophet or not. Apparently, Israel was in no shortage of false prophets. The Jews of the day were looking for a messiah that would perform ‘a manna from heaven type’ miracle. So they say to Him, “What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness…” (Jn 6:31)
Our Lord responds that He is the “true bread from heaven.” The manna was miraculously given to their fathers in the desert, but it was a prefigurement of the Eucharistic bread. Moses carefully warned the people that they were to gather enough bread for that day. Any bread that was kept overnight would perish and rot. This fact stresses that the perishable food cannot give a person eternal life, it would take the imperishable bread of life to give them eternal life. The people respond with, “Lord, give us this bread always.”
Jesus then reveals to them that He is the bread of life, and that “he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” (Jn 6:35) What a promise our Lord gives to us. He satisfies our deepest hunger and our greatest thirst in life. He is the bread that “gives life to the world.”
Jesus then tells the crowd, they are to eat this bread come down from heaven. They dispute Him, wondering how He can give them His flesh to eat. They understood Him in a very literal sense. That is why they are upset. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” They did not take Him to mean some sort of spiritual communion or simple belief in Him. No, they did understand Him to mean eating and drinking His flesh and blood.
Seven times he tells them (using two different verbs meaning ‘to eat’). The last four times He uses a form of the verb usually associated with animals feeding upon something. It is a graphic form of the verb meaning to ‘chew’ or to ‘gnaw’. Earlier in the text uses a more common form of the verb ‘to eat’. He could not be any clearer that He intends us to eat His flesh.
“After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer walked with him.” (Jn 6:66) Our Lord did not call them back and say, “No, no you misunderstood it is only a symbol!” He let them go. If they had misunderstood, He would have further explained the teaching. For those that believed in Him until the end, they would see the fulfillment of these words from John 6. At the Last Supper, they would see how He was going to give them His flesh and blood to eat. That is under the sacramental forms of bread and wine. The Eucharist. This does not change the reality of His giving us His flesh and blood to eat. The substance of the bread and wine are no longer there; the substance of His flesh and blood is under the outward appearance of bread and wine. The sacramental forms of bread and wine should speak to us of how necessary Jesus is for us in our lives. He chose these signs for a reason. They teach us that as necessary as food is for the body; the Eucharist is as necessary for the soul.
Our Lord eventually turns to the ‘twelve’, “Will you also go away?” He is ready to lose even His inner circle of apostles. Peter, the first pope, speaks, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy one of God.” (Jn 6:68) This teaching on the real presence of the Eucharist is the ‘Mystery of Faith’. It is the goal of all evangelization. It is the sacrament toward which all the others are ordered. It is our greatest treasure. It is our pledge of future glory and renewal of Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection. Let us proclaim it to the world!
Taken from www.franciscanmissionaries.com. Used by permission.
