Going beyond words of Jesus to the Jesus of words!

John 6:51-58

Jesus said, "I am the Bread, living Bread! Who came down out of heaven. Anyone who eats this Bread will live, and forever! The Bread that I present to the world so that it can eat and live is myself, this flesh-and-blood self." 52 At this, the Jews started fighting among themselves: "How can this man serve up his flesh for a meal?" 53 But Jesus didn't give an inch." Only insofar as you eat and drink flesh and blood, the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, do you have life within you. 54 The one who brings a hearty appetite to this eating and drinking has eternal life and will be fit and ready for the Final Day. 55 My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 By eating my flesh and drinking my blood you enter into me and I into you. 57 In the same way that the fully alive Father sent me here and I live because of him, so the one who makes a meal of me lives because of me. 58 This is the Bread from heaven. Your ancestors ate bread and later died. Whoever eats this Bread will live always. "

Food for thought

We have come a long way. We started with the multiplication of bread, when Jesus taught us to go beyond numbers. Then Jesus taught us to go beyond bread. Then he taught us to go beyond death. Today, he teaches us to go beyond words. Words are vehicles that carry meanings. Words are not the end, they're just means to the end.

What is it that Jesus is trying to teach us at Capernaum? What does he want to tell us when he says that He is the Bread, the living Bread? Let's try to go beyond these "words of Jesus" to the "Jesus of the words".  Let's go beyond the words because words often fails us, but they never fail Jesus. Jesus knows what he is saying and what he wants to tell us. It's we that are frustrating his attempts.

As you know, there are more things than there are words; words are fewer than reality; there are far less words than there are what words mean. This is why we use the same words to mean different things. For instance, the expression "the Gospel of Jesus", means two things: 1) the Gospel that belongs to Jesus (Jesus' Gospel). 2) that Jesus is the Gospel. When a woman says to the man, or man to the woman, "honey", what do they mean? That the other is really honey? No, because honey comes from bees, and people are not bees.

This is what Jesus is doing. He is teaching us eternal and heavenly truths, many of which are inexpressible in human words. He is saying, for instance that he is the bread of life. To understand these words, we have to understand what bread is: it sustains life.  Without bread we cannot live. Bread, in all its forms and kind, keeps us live because it has life sustaining elements.

The same with Jesus. He sustains life; he gives us life. In today’s gospel Jesus focuses on the fact that the bread of the Eucharist is indeed himself but does not say a word on the process whereby this identity between the bread and himself takes place. Jesus speaks of the food that he gives for our life and he speaks of it in terms of ordinary and normal food and drink. And it is so. The Eucharistic bread is REAL bread from wheat flour; the Eucharistic wine is REAL drink made from grape juice; “for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink” (verse 55).

Let's look at all this in another way. Have you ever observed a mother nursing her baby? As she holds that baby at her breast, and as the baby sucks the milk from the breast, the mother silently seems to say to the baby, as she looks at it, "Unless you drink my milk, you will not have life in you". Similar thing happens with Jesus, as he looks at us: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life.