Prophet Elijah prays for his own death, saying, ‘it is enough Lord’. He feels defeated by
queen Jezebel and his prophetic mission a failure. He retreats to the wilderness,
wasteland of his life, no food, no consolation! In utter desolation he encounters God.
The Lord says, ‘get up and eat, you haven’t completed your mission’. In the gospel,
people grumble/complain because Jesus said, ‘I am the bread of life’. Grumble means
not listening or understanding. People reject the meaning of the sign of the miracle of
the five loaves just as their ancestors did in the desert; God provided them manna yet
they went on to worship a golden calf. People often let their burdens, anger control
their lives and fail to see, believe and be receptive to what God offers. What God offers
here is the ‘flesh of the Son of God’; flesh is Jesus himself, Son of God who became
man. Living in disappointments, feeling rejected does not help. Jesus’ offer of himself
in the Eucharist becomes our strength for life’s journey, to complete the task given to
us and encouragement in times of despair, trials.
‘I am the bread of life’: I am is God’s name in the OT. Jesus and the Father are one. It is
the Father who draws people to Jesus. If one abandons grumbling, self-righteous
attitudes, or as Paul says, rejects all that comes out of malice, that person is drawn to
faith by God. Listening to Jesus is listening to God. People knew him only as a fellow
man from Nazareth. They needed faith to know the true origin of Jesus as one comes
down from heaven. ‘Comes down’ refers to God’s transcendence, otherness, the
mystery of God and heaven means what is eternal. Jesus is the one who reveals this
mystery of God. The relationship we build with Christ in our reception of the Eucharist
goes beyond death to eternity because he is bread of heaven. We are already raised to
newness of life, eternal life in our communion with Christ, because Eucharist is also
Christ’s communion with us and not just ours only. Eating the bread of life in the
eucharist is our experience of friendship with Christ and our life of fellowship, self-giving
to others, the way we remain in Jesus.
In our Eucharistic communion Christ comes to us not to frighten or shame us but to
reveal to us our true self, our worth and task in life. Jesus speaks to us what we can
be, what he thinks about us or how we can be imitators of God! Saying ‘I am the bread
of life’, Jesus invites us to taste his presence and goodness, his longing to be in loving
union with us. Jane Clement writes: ‘what would I do O master if you come slowly out
of the woods, would I know your step? Would I know by my beating heart? Would I
know by your eyes? Would I feel on my shoulder too, the burden you carry? Would I
rise and stand still till you draw near? or cover my eyes in shame? or would I simply
forget everything except that you had come and were here’? In every Mass, every
communion, Jesus says to us, ‘let go your hurts past and present, do not hold on to
your anxiety; I have come and I am here with you’!