This Sunday’s Gospel passage continues Jesus’ teaching on the bread of life.
Let’s take a brief look at it.
A crowd has gathered in a lonely place to listen to Jesus.
In pity for them, Jesus has multiplied five loaves and two fish to feed them, and there is still food left over.
This excess symbolizes the abundance of the life He has come to give to the world.
The next day, in another place, Jesus meets some of those who benefited from the abundant and free food, who seek Him.
Jesus warns them that their search is not sincere.
They have witnessed the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, but they have not reflected on the meaning of the miracle; they have simply seen that they got a free meal and expect Jesus to give them another.
Jesus then tells them that they should seek Him for reasons that correspond to the mission for which He has come to earth.
If He has come to give eternal life, they should not seek Him for a food that only sustains this temporary life.
They must seek him in order to believe in him and attain the life that lasts forever.
The evangelist calls these interlocutors of Jesus “Jews”.
The term does not refer here to a nationality or religion, but to those who resist believing in Jesus.
In today’s passage, these “Jews” find Jesus’ claim to be the living bread that came down from heaven to be beyond all reality and imagination.
How can Jesus be that living bread if they know his parents and relatives?
Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph?
How can he say that he has come down from heaven?
This difficulty is valid and serious, and still persists today, although in a different way.
What is this difficulty?
For the Jews, the patent, visible and evident humanity of Jesus prevents them from conceiving that He could also have a divine dimension, latent, invisible and hidden.
It is incredible to them that God could exist in human form.
If he is human, he cannot be God or come from heaven; if he is God and comes from heaven, he cannot be human.
Our difficulty today is different.
For many, God does not exist.
Therefore, Jesus’ claim to be the bread that came down from heaven seems like a myth, a fiction.
According to this perspective, Jesus does not come from God, because God does not exist; nor does he offer eternal life, because there is no other life than this.
That is the difficulty for some today.
Others pose the same question in another way: what is important is the present life, they say.
If there is eternal life, we will know in due time; if there is God, he does not seem to show signs of being alive.
People who think this way value Jesus for his moral teaching, his commandment to love one’s neighbor, and his welcoming of sinners and the estranged.
This way of thinking, of course, reduces Jesus to a mere moral teacher.
It is true that Jesus is a moral teacher, but with a view to eternity; he is a moral teacher who guides our freedom towards God.
The present life is important because it is the time in which we make our pilgrimage towards eternity.
Every ethical commitment to improve the conditions of life in the present is valuable, but ultimately our life only has meaning and reaches fulfillment in the perspective of eternity.
Finally, it may happen that even some who call themselves Catholics, who attend Mass on Sundays and claim to believe in Jesus, actually believe in Him only as long as He does not interfere in their lives.
I say this so that everyone may examine himself before God.
These are people who want Jesus, the Gospel and the teaching of the Church to accommodate the customs of the world, even when these practices contradict the will of God and the mission of Jesus.
These people believe in a God and a Jesus Christ molded to their measure and convenience.
They claim to believe, but not fully.
Deep down, they consider Jesus as someone who can be manipulated at their convenience; they do not believe that there is a divine, demanding reality that does not accommodate the tastes, trends and customs of this world.
Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph?
How can he now say that he has come down from heaven?
Jesus is not surprised by the rejection he faces.
He simply warns and admonishes: “Do not murmur”.
In Sacred Scripture, “murmuring” means to distrust God, to resist Him, to speak ill of His providence; it is to want to reduce God to dimensions in which He can be manipulated and put at the service of one’s own interests.
Resistance to recognize that Jesus is the living bread sent by God from heaven is “murmuring”.
And Jesus pronounces words that may seem obscure about the beginning of faith: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and him I will raise up on the last day”.
These words may seem obscure because they suggest that faith no longer depends solely on the will of the one who wants to believe, but on an attraction that the Father exerts on the believer.
Jesus confirms this affirmation with another: “Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me”.
If faith depends on the Father’s attraction, is one responsible for believing or not?
And how can one listen to the Father and allow oneself to be attracted by Him?
It seems that Jesus wants to teach us that faith in him, and ultimately faith in God, is not a purely human act, although it is a decision of the will of each person.
But faith demands a previous disposition of openness to that dimension of the invisible, latent and hidden reality where God acts.
The Jews who resist believing in Jesus limit themselves to the realm of historical data: this man grew up here, we know his parents and relatives.
And they do not open themselves to the transcendent realm where God acts and dwells and from where the Son of God made man comes.
This happened then and continues to happen today.
There are those who shut themselves up in the horizon of this world and ignore that there can exist a reality that transcends the realities of this world.
But whoever opens himself to this dimension of transcendence will be able to believe in Jesus.
That person will participate now and forever in the eternal life that Jesus offers.
“He who believes in me has eternal life. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; he who eats of this bread will live forever.”
Let us not get caught up in this world as if it were the only true thing.
Let us not think that the only real needs are those that refer to the body; openness to eternity, openness to God, is also a need of this temporal life, for that is where the meaning of time and life comes from.