Monday in the Third Week of Easter, April 19, 2021

John 6:22-29

[After Jesus had fed the five thousand men, his disciples saw him walking on the sea.] The next day, the crowd that remained across the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not gone along with his disciples in the boat, but only his disciples had left. Other boats came from Tiberias near the place where they had eaten the bread when the Lord gave thanks. When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered them and said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.” So they said to him, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”

The Lord could have stayed in the place where he had fed the crowd in order to teach them that he was the Bread of Life.  Instead, he chose to walk across the sea to the Apostles, who were rowing their boat, returning to Capernaum.  The people whom he had fed knew that the Lord often retired to that town and so “they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum.”  The Lord lured them on, as it were, with the idea that he would feed them again — and he would, but with his heavenly doctrine and not with earthly bread and fish.

“Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”  St. Paul seems to contradict this saying when he writes, “Let him not eat who does not work” (2 Thessalonians 3, 10).  In fact, the Lord uses hyperbole to make his point, and is not encouraging indolence.  In this way he shows the vital necessity of working for “the food that endures for eternal life”.  It is almost to say, If you do not work for the imperishable food, why bother working for food that does perish?  The Lord has already spoken to his Apostles about this food: “My food is to do the will of him that sent me, that I may perfect his work” (John 4, 34).  He rewords this for the crowd: “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”  That is, This is the work God gives you.  And who is the one in whom to believe?  “The Son of Man.”  In setting side by side the feeding with the perishable food and that which is imperishable, Jesus identifies himself as this “Son of Man”.  And who is the “Son of Man”?  “Lo, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and he came even to the Ancient of Days: and they [the angels] presented him before him. And he gave him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him: his power is an everlasting power that shall not be taken away: and his kingdom that shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7, 13-14).

“What can we do to accomplish the works of God?”  The people in the crowd ask a very good question to ask the Son of Man.  Later, when the Lord teaches them their need to eat his Body and drink his Blood, they will recoil and we will see that their faith in him was weak.  His teaching was too much for many of them, even though they had experienced a miracle that supported both his teaching and his identity as the Son of Man.  It was as if they were saying to the Lord, We will believe in you as long as you do not ask too much of us.  This attitude brings to mind the demons who readily acknowledged Jesus as the Son of God, but begged him to leave them alone.

In the same way as bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus at Holy Mass, he will change us from the children of wrath into saints, and from the keepers of pigs into beloved children warmly welcomed into their Father’s house, with rings put onto our fingers and a robe put onto our backs.  Unlike the bread and wine, we possess free will, and it is in fully and without reservation allowing God to do his work on us, that we are truly transformed and made fit for heaven.