The crowd who was fed with the five loaves and two fish wanted to make Jesus their
king but Jesus withdrew to the hills. The crowd did not give up because it was Jewish
belief that when the Messiah comes, there will be plenty to eat and drink; the Messiah
is king. Jesus tells the crowd that they do not understand the spiritual meaning of the
miracle, that they were thinking only of food that perishes. Work for the food that leads
to eternal life, he says and that he is the bread of life. Jesus is not saying that we
shouldn’t work for daily bread but get to know the eternal dimension of life, true
meaning of life in relation to God and others. Jesus says eternal life is to believe in the
one who is sent by God. What does that mean? John’s gospel says, the reason for
sending the Son is that God so loved the world, to save the world and Jesus is the
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus says, for true life, you eat my
flesh and drink my blood and you remain in my love! When a young man asked Jesus:
‘what shall I do for eternal life, Jesus says, love God and love your neighbor. To believe
in Jesus, to remain in him or eternal life is about love!
How is Jesus the food that lasts for ever, bread of life? Jesus is saying, I am the ground
of your life, my love fashioned you. All life’s toils must be directed to building
relationships of love/friendship because as Paul says, even faith and hope will
disappear, love alone will remain and God is love. Jesus the bread of life reminds us
this truth in two ways: in the Eucharist and in the gospel. They are called the two tables
in church, the table of the Eucharist and table of the word of God; we encounter
Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist and we hear his voice in the gospel; both
transform us in love or as Paul says we receive a new self in Christ. So, hunger for a
spiritual revolution; Jesus comes to us in the Eucharist as bread of life, the power in us
for a spiritual revolution of love! Eucharist connects heaven and earth and we are
already linked to eternity in our communion with Christ. Christ’s self-giving in the
Eucharist moves us to be generous in love. During Mass, St. Augustine used to hold
the Eucharistic bread and say: ‘behold what you are [body of Christ], become what you
receive’.
How does the table of the word of God change us? The writer Don Miller says: ‘I
started listening to the voice of God in my conscience. God’s voice tells me to do
things, to help people, to volunteer or write a letter or talk to my neighbor. Sometimes I
would do the thing God wanted and the story always went well and sometimes I would
ignore it and watch TV. Nothing God wanted me to do was difficult, until I listened to a
story about a man who was reunited with his father after twenty years. Suddenly God’s
voice said to me, ‘go find your father [after thirty years] and tell him, I forgive you’. I told
God, no! God asked me, ‘what better story can you write about yourself, if you say
no’? Church Father Origen said: ‘the word of God is not letters on a page but channels
of grace into the heart’. The grace of the Eucharist and the voice of God in word of
God is empowering us to say yes to God and helping us to write a better story about
ourselves, a love story and its climax is in eternity in our union with God!