Beginning this week and continuing for several weeks to come, the Church invites us to pause and reflect on just a single chapter of John’s Gospel, but not even the entire chapter. Rather solely what’s now known as the ‘bread of life discourse’. I would have found this emphasis odd forty-five years ago having been raised in a protestant tradition and then subsequently drifted away from the faith for the most part. But after marrying a Catholic, I became so intrigued with that branch of Christianity for several reasons to the point that I entered the Church a year later after meeting with a priest in his office for coffee and discussion over a period of several weeks… there was no Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults in those days. And that is where I first heard about the Actual Presence … and then everything made sense.
I’d of course heard and read the ‘bread of life discourse’ before but had always been taught that it was just symbolic. Then, having accepted Jesus’ words in the literal sense, all the formerly hidden linkages to Old Testament ‘types’ or prefigurations revealed themselves… but let’s not get to far ahead of ourselves considering the discourse in entirety instead of taking our cue from the Church’s admonition to carefully and slowly consider each phrase, each word. What do we encounter as we begin?
John tells us that the commemoration of the Passover was near and that evoked a strong collective memory for first century Jews who annually re-immersed themselves as it were in the Exodus experience during which their forebearers were sustained by bread from heaven, manna. The manna was freely given each day by God and only a single day’s supply was to be collected except for the sabbath when a double-portion could be gathered out of respect for the Divine command to do no work on that day above all other days. The manna could also not be stored except for a single small portion placed in memoriam in the Ark of the Covenant on arrival at the promised land. It was superabundant bread meaning that it had capabilities far beyond ordinary loaves. Use your holy imagination as St. Ignatius called it – living indeed flourishing in a challenging environment on just bread and water for 40 years. Amazing!
What else do we note? Jesus began with five barley loaves and two small fish… a typical person’s lunch of ‘pita bread’ and a bit of protein. Isn’t it curious that Jesus didn’t use his power to multiply the starting amount. Wouldn’t it have made more sense in our way of thinking to transform that meager amount in such a way so that each person received three or four whole loaves and a complete fish or two to feast upon? But no, each loaf, each fish was broken and torn into a superabundance – significantly more than was needed – amount to be shared among the massive crowd of hungry folk leaving twelve carefully preserved baskets of fragments. Jesus introduces here to the crowd, and us, that God will not only meet our perceived need but far beyond.
That is as far as we will go this week. Linger there seeing these verses as preparation for the remainder of Jesus’ initial Eucharistic teaching. Envision the scene of that hungry crowd searching for something they couldn’t articulate, something beyond food for that meal came at the end of a long day… and yet it too came unasked for and unanticipated. The people came to him in need but people, including us, have always searched for the something that would fill the vacant spots in our minds, souls, and hearts. Perhaps their, and maybe our, souls echoed what would have been to them a familiar psalm 145 phrase, “The eyes of all look hopefully to you, and you give them their food in due season; you open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.”
This week let’s all consider those deepest needs within us that we cannot even put into words. Let’s all think about that.
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