14. The bread of life

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Two banquets were held in Galilee in the course of a year: one in the court of Herod at which John the Baptist preached; the other, a banquet in the open air served by Our Lord. He had crossed over the Sea of Galilee, probably to avoid the fury of Herod who had just murdered the Baptist and

There was a great multitude following Him;

They had seen the miracles He performed over the sick.

JOHN 6:2

Their motives for following Him were somewhat confused; but there was a growing idea that He was the Christ. Greatly disappointed were they when He retired to the mountain with His disciples. The Gospel chariot was stopped briefly for the sake of a little rest for those who drove it. Because the Passover was near and many were on their way to Jerusalem, the crowd swelled to five thousand (not counting women and children).

There were many coming and going,

And they scarcely had leisure even to eat.

MARK 6:31

The little town to which they came was six miles across the water from Capharnaum. When Our Blessed Lord got out of the boat as it touched the shore, the multitudes were there to meet Him. They had brought their sick with them, and they were hungry in more ways than one. They gave Him no repose, not because they believed Him to be the Son of God, but because they regarded Him as a magician who could do wonders, or a physician who could heal the sick.

And He had pity on them,

Since they were like sheep

That have no shepherd.

MARK 6:34

He arranged the crowds in rows of a hundred and fifty, each row seated a little higher than the one below. In the center of them all stood Our Lord. Testing Philip, He asked:

Whence are we to buy bread

For these folk to eat?

JOHN 6:5

Philip made a rapid calculation that it would take two hundred pennyworth to feed the multitude. Jesus did not ask, “How much money is needed?” but “Whence would come the bread?” Philip should have answered that He Who had raised the dead and healed the sick could supply the bread. Andrew then pointed to a boy who had five barley loaves and two fishes. Andrew, too, did a little arithmetic and asked:

But what is that among so many?

JOHN 6:9

In the Old Testament, God was pleased to use trivial and insignificant things to fulfill His purposes, like the flag on the cradle of a babe which won the heart of Pharaoh’s daughter, or the shepherd’s stick of Moses which worked miracles in Egypt, or the slingshot of David which overthrew the Philistines. Because bread was now involved, there was even a kind of a parallel to the gestures that were later used at the Last Supper.

And He took the five loaves and the two fishes,

And looked up to heaven

And blessed and broke the loaves

And gave these to His disciples.

MARK 6:41

As a grain of wheat slowly multiplies in the ground, so the bread and fishes, by a Divinely hastened process were multiplied until everyone had his fill. If He had given money, no one would have had his fill. Nature was to go as far as it could, then God supplied the rest. He ordered that the fragments be gathered up; they filled twelve baskets. In the reckoning of men there is always a deficit; in the arithmetic of God, there is always a surplus.

The effect of the miracle on the multitude was stupendous. There was no denying the fact that Christ had Divine power; He showed it in multiplying the bread. It brought their minds back immediately to Moses, who had given their forefathers manna in the desert. And had not Moses said that he was the prefigure of Christ or the Messias?

No, the Lord thy God will raise up for thee

A prophet like myself, of thy own race,

A Brother of thy own; it is to Him

Thou must listen.

DEUTERONOMY 18:15

If Moses had authenticated or sealed himself by bread in the desert, was not This the One to Whom Moses had pointed, since He too gave bread miraculously? Who, then, could be a better King for them to throw off the yoke of the Romans and make them free? Here was a Deliverer, greater than Josue, and here were five thousand men ready to take up arms; here was a King greater than David or Solomon, Who could rebel against the tyrants and set the people free. They had already acknowledged Him as a Prophet and Teacher; now they would proclaim Him as King. But the Reader of hearts knew how worldly were their ambitions for Him:

Knowing, then, that they meant to come

And carry Him of , so as to make

A King of Him, Jesus once again

Withdrew on to the hillside all alone.

JOHN 6:15

They could not make Him King; He was born a King. The Wise Men knew this as they asked:

Where is He that has been born

The King of the Jews:

We have seen His Star out in the East,

And we have come to worship Him.

MATTHEW 2:2

His Kingship would come through the Divine “must” of the Cross, and not through popular force. This was the second time that He declined a crown; the first was when Satan offered Him the kingship of the world, if He would fall down and adore him. “My Kingdom is not of this world,” He would tell Pilate later on. But the crowd would push Him to a throne; He said He would not be pushed; He would be “lifted up” to it and the throne would be the Cross, and His Kingship would be over hearts.

It might have been this very flight from political kingship that put doubts into the mind of Judas; for it was in connection with this miracle and the speech of Our Lord which followed that Judas was first described as a traitor. Since Our Lord would not accept a temporal sovereignty such as Satan offered Him, He must prepare Himself to hear later on, “We have no King, but Caesar.”

Our Lord, knowing what was in the hearts of the populace, withdrew into the mountain alone. No unclean hands would put a crown on His head—except a crown of thorns. But in order to teach His Apostles that they, too, were not to “cash in” on cheap popularity, He constrained them to take a ship and go to the other side of the lake, a distance of five or six miles. But He did not go with them.

Between the hours of three and six in the morning, as they were shivering, wet and weary in the boat, a storm arose. This was the second storm which found them on the lake after having been called to be Apostles; the first was on the occasion of an earlier visit of Our Lord. Both storms came at night and both were violent. It must have been a particularly strong tempest to have affected these men whose lives had been spent on that particular sea. Perhaps it was not only the storm at sea that troubled them, but also the fact that their Master had refused to be a King. It is very likely that they also doubted the power of the One Who had multiplied the bread, and then sent them across the lake the night of a storm. If He could multiply bread, why could He not prevent storms?

For Our Lord to leave them and then quickly return in the midst of the sea, was to them just as impossible as if He should be dead and then rise again. But suddenly, while they were toiling at the oars, they saw Him coming to them across the waters. They were afraid and troubled. He spoke to them:

It is Myself; do not be afraid.

Then they took Him on board willingly enough;

And all at once their boat reached the land

They were making for.

JOHN 6:20

The solitary crew were not as solitary as they thought. The same rhythm of joy and sorrow that ran through His life was present here; for it was in the midst of darkness, storm, and danger that Christ came, planting His feet on the white crests of the raging sea. Now that He had shown His power:

The ship’s crew came and said,

Falling at His Feet,

Thou art indeed the Son of God.

MATTHEW 14:33

They acknowledged that He was not only the Messias Who was expected but also the Son of God. Some of the men in that boat had been disciples of John the Baptist, and had heard the Father say during Our Lord’s baptism that this was the Son of God. It is also very likely that some of them had been present when the demon declared Him to be the Son of God. Nathanael had already given Him this title.

It was on this occasion that Peter, when he first saw Our Lord and before He came into the boat, asked if he might walk upon the waters and come to Him. The Lord bade Peter come; but after a few moments Peter began to sink. Why? Because he took account of the winds; because he concentrated on natural difficulties; because he trusted not in the power of the Master and failed to keep his eyes on Him.

Then seeing how strong the wind was,

He lost courage and began to sink.

MATTHEW 14:30

He finally cried out to the Lord for help:

Lord, save me,

And Jesus at once stretched out His Hand

And caught hold of him saying

Why didst thou hesitate, man of little faith.

MATTHEW 14:31

The deliverance was first; then the gentle rebuke; and that probably with a smile on His face and love in His voice. But this was not the only time that poor Peter would doubt the Master Whom he loved so well. He who then asked to walk upon the waters in order to come quickly to the Lord was the one who would later swear that he was ready to go to prison and even to death for Him. Courageous in the boat but timid in the waters, he would later on be bold at the Last Supper, but cowardly the night of the trial. The scene at the lake was a rehearsal for another fall of Peter.

The people were still bent on making Our Lord King when they found Him the following day at Capharnaum. To their inquiry as to how He came thither, His answer was one which reprimanded those who thought religion had to do primarily with bread lines and soup kitchens.

Believe Me, if you are looking for Me now,

It is not because of the miracles you have seen;

It is because you were fed with the loaves,

And had your fill.

JOHN 6:26

They had not taken the miracle as a sign of His Divinity; they were looking for Him instead of to Him. Job saw Him in His loss as well as His gain; they saw Him only as a means of satisfying their bread-hunger, not soul-hunger. Excitement is not religion; if it was, an “Alleluia” on Sunday could become a “Crucify” on Friday.

Our Lord then told them:

You should not work to earn food which perishes

In the using.

Work to earn food which affords,

Continually, eternal life,

Such food as the Son of Man will give you;

God, the Father, has authorized Him.

JOHN 6:27

He was setting two kinds of bread before them: the bread that could perish, and the bread that could endure unto life everlasting. He cautioned them against following Him as a donkey following the master who holds a carrot. To lift their carnal minds to Eternal Food, He suggested that they seek the Heavenly Bread the Father authorized or sealed. Oriental bread was often sealed with the official mark or name of the baker. In fact, the Talmudic word for “baker” is related to the word “seal.” As hosts used in the Mass have a seal upon them (such as a lamb, or a cross), so Our Lord was implying that the Bread they should seek was the Bread affirmed by His Father, therefore Himself.

They wanted some further proof that the Father had authorized Him; He gave bread, yes, but it was not stupendous enough. After all, had not Moses given bread from heaven? Their argument was: what proof had they that He was greater than Moses? Thus, they minimized the miracle of the day before, by comparing Him to Moses, and the bread He gave to the manna of the desert. Our Lord had fed the multitude only once, and Moses had fed them for forty years. In the desert the people always called bread “manna,” meaning “What is it?” But on one occasion, when they despised the manna, they had called it “light bread.” So they now made light of this gift. Our Lord took up the challenge; He said that the manna that they had received from Moses was not Heavenly Bread, nor had it come from heaven; furthermore, it nourished only one nation for a brief space of time. More important still, it was not Moses who gave the manna; it was His Father; finally, the Bread which He would give would nourish unto life everlasting. When He told them that the true Bread came down from heaven, they asked:

Give us this bread.

He answered:

It is I, Who am the Bread of Life.

JOHN 6:35

This was the third time that Our Blessed Lord used an instance from the Old Testament to symbolize Himself. The first was when He likened Himself to the ladder that Jacob saw, thus revealing Himself as a Mediator between heaven and earth. In His discourse with Nicodemus, He compared Himself to the brazen serpent, a healer of the sin-stricken and poisoned world. Now He referred to the manna of the desert, and claimed that He was the true Bread of which the manna had been only the prefigurement. He Who would say:

I am the Light of the world.

JOHN 8:12 

I am the door.

JOHN 10:7–7 

I am the Good Shepherd.

JOHN 10:11–14 

I am the Resurrection and the Life.

JOHN 11:25 

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

JOHN 14:6 

I am the True Vine.

JOHN 11:25

now called Himself three times:

The Bread of Life.

JOHN 6:35–41, 48–51

Once again, He makes the shadow of the Cross appear. Bread must be broken; and He Who had come from God must be a sacrificial Victim that men might truly feed on Him. Hence, it would be a Bread that would result from the voluntary offering of His own flesh to rescue the world from the slavery of sin unto the newness of life.

And now what is this Bread which I am to give?

It is My Flesh, given for the life of the world.

Then the Jews fell to disputing with one another,

How can this Man give us His Flesh to eat?

Whereupon Jesus said to them,

Believe Me when I tell you this;

You can have no life in yourselves,

Unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man,

And drink His Blood.

JOHN 6:52–54

He not only pictured Himself as One Who had come down from heaven but as One Who had come down to give Himself, or to die. It would only be in the slain Christ that they would come to understand the glory of a Bread that nourishes unto eternity. He was here referring to His death; for the word “giving” expressed the sacrificial act. The Flesh and Blood of the Incarnate Son of God, which would be severed in death, would become the source of everlasting life. When He said, “My Flesh,” He meant His human nature, as “The Word became Flesh” meant that God the Word or the Son assumed to Himself a human nature. But it was only because that human nature would be linked to a Divine Personality for all eternity that He could give eternal life to those who received it. And when He said that He would give that for the life of the world, the Greek word used meant “all mankind.”

His words became more poignant because this was the season of the Passover. Though the Jews looked on blood in an awesome manner, they were leading their lambs at that time to Jerusalem, where blood would be sprinkled to the four directions of the earth. The strangeness of the utterance about giving His Body and Blood diminished against the background of the Passover; He meant that the shadow of the animal lamb was passing, and that its place was being taken by the true Lamb of God. As they had communion with the flesh and blood of the Paschal Lamb, so they would now have communion with the Flesh and Blood of the true Lamb of God. He, Who was born in Bethlehem, the “House of Bread” and was laid in a manger, a place of food for lower animals, would now be to men, so inferior to Him, their Bread of Life. Everything in nature has to have communion in order to live; and through it what is lower is transformed into what is higher: chemical into plants, plants into animals, animals into man. And man? Should he not be elevated through communion with Him Who “came down” from heaven to make man a partaker of the Divine nature? As a Mediator between God and man, He said that, as He lived by the Father, so they would live by Him:

As I live because of the Father,

The living Father Who has sent Me,

So he who eats Me will live,

In his turn, because of Me.

JOHN 6:58

How carnal was the eating of the manna, and how spiritual was the eating of the flesh of Christ! It was a far more intimate living by Him than a baby’s living by the nourishment supplied by the mother. Every mother to every child at her breast can say, “Eat, this is my body; this is my blood.” But actually the comparison ends there; for in the mother-child relationship, both are on the same level. In the Christ-human relationship, the difference is that of God and man, heaven and earth. Furthermore, no mother ever has to die and take on a more glorious existence in her human nature before she can be the nourishment of her offspring. But Our Lord said that He would have to “give” His life, before He would be the Bread of Life to believers. The plants which nourish animals do not live on another planet; the animals which nourish man do not live in another world. If Christ then was to be the “Life of the World,” He must be tabernacled among men as Emmanuel or “God with us,” supplying a life for the soul as earthly bread is the life of the body.

But the mind of His hearers rose no higher than the physical, as they asked: How can this man give us His flesh to eat?

It was madness for any man to offer his flesh to eat. But they were not left long in the dark as Our Lord corrected them, saying that not a mere man, but “the Son of Man” would give it. As usual, that title referred to the expiatory sacrifice He would offer. Not the dead Christ would believers feed upon, but the Glorified Christ in Heaven Who died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. The mere eating of the flesh and blood of a man would profit nothing; but the glorified Flesh and Blood of the Son of Man would profit unto life everlasting. As man died spiritually by physically eating in the Garden of Eden, so he would live again spiritually through eating the fruit of the Tree of Life.

Christ’s words were too literal, and He cleared up too many false interpretations, for any of His hearers to claim that the Eucharist (or Body and Blood He would give) was a mere type or symbol, or that its effects depended upon the subjective dispositions of the receiver. It was Our Lord’s method whenever anyone misunderstood what He said to correct the misunderstanding, as He did when Nicodemus thought “born again” meant re-entering his mother’s womb. But, whenever anyone correctly understood what He said, but found fault with it, He repeated what He said. And in this discourse, Our Lord repeated five times what He had said about His Body and Blood. The full meaning of these words did not become evident until the night before He died. In His last will and testament, He left that which on dying no other man has ever been able to leave, namely, His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, for the life of the world.

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