The Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 1, 2021

John 6:24–35

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.” So they said to him, “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 him, “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 continues the narrative begun last Sunday, with the feeding by the Lord Jesus of the five thousand people. 

“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.”  The Lord Jesus tended to reserve the expression “amen, amen” for solemn occasions when he intended his hearers to pay particularly close attention to his teachings.  Here he employs it at the beginning of one of his most important discourses — on himself as the true Bread of Life, and the implications of this.  He begins by pointing out that the ones who have followed him, who had wanted to make him king the evening before (cf. John 6, 15), were motivated by the miracle itself, and not by what it meant.  “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life”  The Lord speaks of the food they had eaten and which had satisfied their physical hunger in order to talk about the food that “endures” (“remains”, “abides”) unto eternal life. That is, the bread that they ate is digested in the body and disappears, providing strength for a time, but the Bread that it signifies remains in the person and is not digested but endures, giving eternal life to the soul.  The Lord urges them to “work” for it, that is, to do the work commanded by the Son of Man, who would, in turn, feed them.  “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?”  They recognize that the work the Son of Man will give them is the work of God.  “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”  That is, that they believe that he, Jesus, was sent by God, and that they acknowledge his teachings as divine revelation.  

“What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?”  The people understand what he is saying, that he is referring to himself as “the Son of Man” and as the one sent by God, on whom God “has set his seal”.  Their question, though, tells us that they did not understand the miracle of the loaves and the fish as a sign beyond the physical reality.  “Our ancestors ate manna in the desert.”  They regard the bread that Jesus produced for them as lesser than the manna God sent down from heaven.  If they are to believe in him, they are saying, he must perform as great or greater a miracle than that of the manna.  “What sign can you do?” they ask.  The Lord replies, “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.”  He explains to the crowd that the manna was the sign.  He, the Son of God, will now fulfill this earlier sign.  The idea that the feeding with manna, though historically true, was but a sign of something greater to come would have stunned the Lord’s hearers.  “My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.”  The key to understanding the meaning of these words is in knowing the tense of the verb, which is in the present.  That is, the action is taking place now.  We ought to read this as, “My Father is giving you the true bread from heaven.”  This is meant to contrast with the antecedent “it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven”, which is in a past tense, the perfect.  The sense, then, is: My Father gave you bread from heaven in the past; my Father is now giving you the true bread from heaven.  The first is a sign, the second is the reality signified by the sign.  This bread, which the Father “is giving” “is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world”.  To this, the people say, “Sir, give us this bread always.”  This echoes the request made by the woman whom Jesus met at the well: “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw” (John 4, 15).  The Lord answers them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”  He himself is the true Bread which the Father sends down from heaven and “is giving” to the people.  Jesus is revealing to the people that the miracle of the loaves and fishes was the sign that God had become man and that belief in him will lead to eternal happiness.  He will subsequently explain why the sign is that of bread.