SUNDAY GOSPEL – John 6:41-51.
Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life.
PART II – I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
KIND OF WRITING: The speech in chapter 6 is a homily and gives us a good glimpse of what preaching was like towards the end of the first century. For us eternal life usually means the next life and it can sound remote and unreal. The Fourth Gospel, where the expression occurs seventeen times, can be of help. The last occurrence (17:2) teaches that eternal life is a quality of relationship which begins now in the present moment and which is indestructible (Heb 7:16).
POINTERS FOR PRAYER
1. Jesus gave the disciples a share in his Faith is reasonable, but we cannot reason our way into faith. We have to be ‘drawn by the Father’. We have to be ‘taught by God’. What opens your mind and heart to God’s message?
2. One thing which closes our minds to what another is saying is when we label them disparagingly, as the Jews did to Jesus. Have you ever had the experience of being surprised by the wisdom of another when you laid aside your prejudices about her/him to listen to what s/ he was saying?
3. ‘No one has ever seen the Father except the one who is from God’. As Jesus put a human face on God and God’s love, so God’s love for us today is mediated through one another. How have other people been sacraments of God’s love for you?
4. The way in which Jesus became a source of life for us was by giving himself. It is when we truly give ourselves that we can be life-giving to one another. If we do not give of ourselves, what do we have to offer? How have you discovered the importance of self-giving, in yourself or in others?