Thursday in the Third Week of Easter, May 5, 2022

John 6:44-51

Jesus said to the crowds: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day. It is written in the prophets: “They shall all be taught by God.”  Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. 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 Lord continues his preaching on himself as the Bread of Life.

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day.”  Having taught that all those who come to him are given to him by the Father, the Lord Jesus teaches that only those drawn by the Father may come to him.  The Father draws certain ones to his Son.  Another way to put it is that the Father’s will is that people might come to the Son, but only certain people respond to his grace — are “drawn” by his grace.  Each human receives sufficient grace to be drawn to the Son, but many refuse it.  Those who are drawn by the Father and so come to the Son will be raised up on the last day by him.  “They shall all be taught by God.”  The full passage the Lord quotes is, “All your children shall be taught of the Lord: and great shall be the peace of your children” (Isaiah 54, 13).  Using the verse, Jesus affirms that all people shall receive sufficient grace to be saved: all people will be offered the Father’s grace, but just like teaching, it can be rejected, no matter how profitable and attractive it is.

“Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.”  Here, the Lord Jesus speaks of those who follow the Jewish Law, but also those who follow the natural law written on our hearts.  Those who live righteously and seek the good shall be drawn to Jesus.  “Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.”  That is, no matter how good a student a human is of the Father’s words, the Son has a unique relationship with the Father that cannot be approached.  Conversely, because of this relationship and the Son’s perfect alignment with the Father’s will, we can see the Father in him, as the Lord will explain to St. Philip at the last Supper when Philip asks Jesus to show the Apostles the Father: “He who sees me sees the Father also” (John 14, 9).

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.”  The use of “amen” signifies the presentation of a solemn teaching.  The doubling of the “amen” emphasizes the solemnity of the teaching.  Normally this Hebrew word means something like, “let it be done”, but in this context it could be understand by the word “truly”.  “Whoever believes”, that is, whoever believes in me has eternal life.  We should pause and consider what the members of the crowd were looking at: a man very much like themselves, dressed in ordinary clothes and who had not washed or slept in a few days, speaking to them with his ordinary voice, was telling them that if they believed in him, they would possess eternal life.  Perhaps they were not thinking of the miracles he had performed at this point.  It would seem that he, a plain man, as he appeared, was asking them to render the same belief in him as in Almighty God.

“I am the Bread of Life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the Bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.”  He repeats that he is the Bread of Life, and in order to teach what that meant compares the Bread of Life to the manna in the Sinai desert.  Their ancestors had been fed miraculously, wondrously, with the manna that came down from heaven.  They were sustained by this manna for forty years when otherwise they would have perished from hunger.  But the Bread of Life would feed them, those present, and so convey eternal life to them.  “I am the living Bread that came down from heaven.”  Not only is he the Bread of Life, but this Bread is alive, which could not be said even of the manna.  Living Bread would surely nourish in greater ways than bread made of dead wheat.  This living Bread came down from heaven, from the Father.  The Father sent this Bread down to the people and was drawing people to it in order to eat it.  And, “whoever eats this Bread will live forever.”

“And the Bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.”  The Lord now speaks of his Flesh: the “bread” that he will give them to eat is in fact his own Flesh, but under the appearance of bread, “for the life of the world”.  In other words, he means to offer his Flesh in sacrifice for the salvation of the world.  In no way had the Pharisees prepared the people for a Savior of the world.  The Messiah, they taught, would save Israel and destroy its enemies, that is, the nations of the world.  Further, their teaching concerning the Messiah did not have him sacrificing his Flesh for anyone.  He was to come, overthrow the Romans, and rule.  The Lord Jesus is here teaching the crowd which had lately sought to make him king and March with him to Jerusalem, that he, the Messiah, was very different — vastly greater — than what they had been told.