Reading
John 6:44-51
44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
Comment
The initiative to go to Jesus is not ours but is aroused in us by the Father. The verb "to draws" with which Jesus indicates the call of the Father recalls the spousal mystique of the book of the prophet Hosea and the Song of Songs: "I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her." (Hos 2:14); "Take me away with you—let us hurry! Let the king bring me into his chambers." (Song of Songs 1,4).
God arouses faith in the soul not by doing violence to her and dragging her into chains, but by charming her like a gentle lover; and since there can be no love where there is no freedom, he frees the soul to accept or reject it.
The universal call to salvation is announced by Jesus with the affirmation that all will be taught by God, which paraphrases the words of the book of Isaiah "All your children will be taught by the Lord" (Is 54:13).
Jesus- "the one who is from God" (v. 46) is the only one who has seen the Father (Jn 14: 9) and we can be led to him by listening to the Son, his visible image of him. Through the Incarnation, the Logos not only makes himself present to man but feeds on him. In his giving himself as "bread" Jesus expresses his will to be welcomed into total communion with us.
Jesus shows the difference between manna and the bread of life which is dispensed in the person of him. The first, although it came from heaven, was only for the support of the body and could not impart eternal life or offer spiritual nourishment. In fact, all the fathers who ate the manna were still subject to death. The bread of life that is Jesus, on the other hand, represents the pledge of the resurrection.
The identification on the part of Jesus with the living bread which came down from heaven, and of this bread with his flesh alludes to the Eucharist. Although the Greek term used here, sarx, flesh, is different from that used in the last supper, soma, body, it is equivalent to it in the Johannine lexicon. The term "flesh" emphasizes more the concrete reality of the body of Jesus, his equality with our body, and in making himself "bread" the possibility of being assimilated by us and, for us, of being assimilated by him in faith, by participating of his eternity.
Prayer
Draw us to you, O God, make us run towards the heights of the knowledge of your divine mysteries; and refresh us with the bread of life, which nourishes the soul and renders the body incorruptible. Amen.
- Rev. Dr. Luca Vona
