The same people who were satisfied by food at the feeding of the 5,000 followed Jesus across the lake to Capernaum. They had received comfort, healing, and food. Yet, when Jesus was discovered missing, they sought him out wanting more. Jesus was skeptical of their desires. They were laboring for bread that could not last. Jesus explained that G_d had provided the perishable manna in the desert to their ancestors, and now was providing them with bread that would give life to the world. Naturally, they asked for such food. Jesus explained that he was that Bread, sent from heaven.


The crowd not receptive to the Divine, was still seeking the perishable and angrily denounced Jesus’ claims: “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from a heaven’?” When Jesus moved the focus from their current life to eternal life, the healing, the comfort, and the miracle of the loaves were quickly forgotten. Jesus’ claims were remarkable and difficult to accept. He was asking them to believe in his Divinity, and to eat his body, to have eternal life. An endless need cannot be satisfied from an unpredictable and perishable source. Only the everlasting food of G_d can fill an infinite hunger.

C.S Lewis once said, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher…Either this man was, and is, the Son of G_d; or else a madman or something worse.” Like the crowd in Capernaum, we too are called to hear the claims Jesus made for himself, to weigh them, and then to make a decision. A decision that we cannot long avoid requires an openness to a deeply personal and honest self-examination. An openness which will allow us to be drawn by the Spirit, towards the Creator and Life, and with it we can love completely without completely understanding.


Given our experiences, what we come to believe can vary widely, but we must share what we believe to fully be the Church. We have been chosen by G_d to be the Church, to serve as Jesus to those we encounter. We are chosen to believe and to trust, driven to our knees in humility and thanksgiving, extending out our hands in gratitude. To receive the Living Bread, into our palms, into our mouths, into our daily being, becoming the human stained glass through which the Christ illuminates his Church. The Psalmist reminds us, “I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall ever be in my mouth… Taste and see that the LORD is good; happy are they who trust in him!”

Pax,
jbt