LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: Proverbs 9:1-6
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 33(34):2-3, 10-15
Second reading: Ephesians 5:15-20
Gospel: John 6:51-58
Link to readings
COMMENTARY
Today’s Gospel is the fourth in the sequence of readings taken from John 6. At this stage, Jesus’ “Bread of Life” discourse becomes more explicitly Eucharistic. Nonetheless, it remains firmly within the sapiential (“Wisdom”) tradition, where the teaching or revelation that Jesus has to offer is identified with the Manna come down from heaven. This means that, along with participation in the Eucharistic sacrament, the language of “eating” and “drinking” continues to refer to absorbing through faith the revelation he has come down from heaven to impart.
For this reason, the choice of a passage from Proverbs, 9:1-6, as First Reading, forms a suitable background to the Gospel. “Lady Wisdom” speaks here as a rich mistress of a palatial establishment who invites her friends to a sumptuous feast that she has prepared. The “feast” is the good teaching (wisdom) the Book of Proverbs wishes to commend. “Eating” this “feast” is the way to life.
The Gospel, John 6:51-58, “overlaps” a little with the extract from last week by including at the start Jesus’ remarkable claim that the “Bread” which he will give for the life of the world is his own “flesh” (v. 51). As I noted in that connection, the primary reference here is to the fact that the supreme moment of revelation will occur when Jesus lays down his life upon the cross. Nonetheless, the remark sparks off a new section of the discourse when those with whom he is in dialogue (once again referred to as “the Jews”) take the allusion in a very physical sense and, understandably, baulk at the idea of eating someone’s flesh. Out of context, it sounds like cannibalism!
SYMBOLIC UNDERSTANDING
In reply Jesus drives still further into the objection by adding to the notion of eating his flesh, the (especially to Jews) even more repugnant idea of drinking his blood. What he is attempting to do is to draw his audience away from a purely literal and physical understanding to the symbolic understanding that runs in the Wisdom tradition concerning the Manna. Here “eating” refers to absorbing the life-giving revelation. Thus to “eat” Jesus’ flesh and “drink” his blood in this sense opens the way to eternal life—to a share in the divine life that he has from the Father. What the separate references to “flesh” and “blood” communicate is a closer linkage of that revelation to the passion of Jesus, when his flesh and blood will be separated in the death he will die by crucifixion. This is the ultimate meaning of the “bread that has come down from heaven”: the Father has sent his Beloved Son from heaven not simply to become human but to lay down his life in order to give life to the world (John 1:18; 3:16-17). Human beings access that gift of life by grasping in faith (= “eating”) that revelation of divine love.
Alongside and together with this primarily sapiential understanding, however, the text invites us to pick up eucharistic overtones that have been sounding ever since the description of the distribution of the loaves at the beginning of the sequence (6:1-14).
Writing to the Corinthians, Paul explicitly ties the celebration of the Eucharist to the commemoration of Jesus’ death (“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” [1 Cor 11:26]), as also do Matthew, Mark and Luke, by locating its institution on the night before Jesus died and by the words said over the bread (Luke [22:19]) and the cup (Matthew [26:28], Mark [14:24], Luke [22:20]). Here the Fourth Evangelist joins this united witness of the early Christian tradition where participation in the eucharistic bread and cup is the means whereby subsequent generations of believers access the saving benefits of Christ’s death upon the cross. Participation in the one bread and one cup places believers sacramentally before the cross on Calvary and draws their lives into the rhythm of the sacrificial love that brought Christ to his death.
GOD'S LOVE
The sacrament, then, is a parallel way of accessing the same life-giving revelation of God’s love described in the Bread of Life discourse up till this point. In fact, we can say that the openness of the passage to both the sapiential and the sacramental meanings places before the reader or hearer that interplay of Word and Sacrament, of faith and ritual, that has been rediscovered and re-emphasised in Catholic theology since Vatican II. Jesus is “Bread from Heaven” both as life-giving Word of revelation and as “real food” and “real drink” in the Sacrament. Faith is required in both cases and faith draws both together in a mutually enriching way.
Since the primary meaning of “Eucharist” in Greek is “Thanksgiving”, the conclusion of the Second Reading, Eph 5:15-20, is, appropriately, an exhortation to “live eucharistically.”
Brendan Byrne, SJ, FAHA, taught New Testament at Jesuit Theological College, Parkville, Vic., for almost forty years. He is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Divinity (Melbourne). His commentaries on the Gospels can be found at Pauline Books and Media