Tuesday in the Third Week of Easter, April 27, 2020

John 6:30-35

The crowd said to Jesus: “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” So Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” So they said to Jesus, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”   

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass ought to be compared to the account of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, which John describes in  his Gospel, in 4, 5-42.  The two accounts are strikingly similar, and I think John is careful to highlight their similarities.  In the first case, the Lord speaks of water to the woman, and in the second he speaks of bread to a crowd.  The Lord begins with the human need for water or for bread.  The woman and the crowd express their desire for the water or bread of which the Lord speaks, which he promises them will be completely satisfying.  The Lord then teaches that the water and bread of this world, which we must have in order to live, are but signs of the heavenly water and heavenly bread which confer eternal life.  Jesus insists and clarifies so that no doubt can remain for either the woman or the crowd as to what he means.  The Samaritan woman responds by rejoicing and running to tell the people of her town about Jesus.  The crowd of the Jews walks no more with him.  The outcast Samaritan believes;  the children of Israel lose their initial faith.  

In the reading before us, the Jews demand a sign so that they may believe.  This, although they have just received (and eaten) a splendid sign.  Realizing that Jesus has just made clear that he considers himself greater than Moses, the crowd brings up the sign of the Manna that came down from heaven for their ancestors to eat while they wandered in the wilderness.  It is as though they are saying, You indeed fed us a little while ago, but so did Moses feed our ancestors: you may possibly be as great as Moses, but you are not so much greater that you can tell us to believe in you.  Jesus then tells them that he himself is the true Manna that came down from heaven.

In his recounting, John, writing in Greek, gives us the Hebrew word “manna” that Jesus used on this occasion.  He does not try to translate this word into Greek.  He shows his wisdom in not doing this because “manna” does not mean “bread” or “food” or anything like that.  “Manna” is actually a question.  Translated from the Hebrew, the word means “What is it”.   It is actually not a description or a label but a question.  And the Hebrews who first saw and ate it did not know what it was, either (cf. Exodus 16, 15).  It was beyond their realm of experience.  Jesus, identifying himself as the bread that comes down from heaven, answers the question, What is it? The manna itself was a sign for the reality that would come in due time.  Moses and the manna, as great as they were, served as signs for the Lord Jesus.  (Matthew, in his Gospel, is particularly insistent on Jesus as the true Moses).  The sign, then, that the Jews seek from Jesus was given long ago, and what Jesus does is to show the Jews that the time for signs has come to an end, that a new and final age has arrived.  The majority of the Jews rejected his claims and the proofs of his claims, no matter how great.  But the Gentiles, signified by the Samaritan woman, received him with joy.  

We see how precious the gift of faith is, and how the simplest faith can lead a person to the waters of baptism, and to the Food of eternal life.  The woman, who was still thirsty when she hurriedly left the well,, received faith.  The Jews, with their full bellies, rejected it.