The Eucharistic Discourse

Chapter 6 of the gospel according to John, brings us back to Galilee. The evangelist recounted an important moment of Jesus’ visit to Jerusalem on the occasion of a feast in which he healed a paralytic man. It is a meaningful sign that he makes to show his ability to make the person capable of living the law. Having returned to Galilee, the evangelist presents another sign made by Jesus at the lake of Gennesaret or Tiberias, as the fourth evangelist calls it. Setting it in the Passover period, so the whole chapter takes its tone from this symbolic dating. We are close to Passover, the feast of the Jews, and the Passover preceding the definitive, the one of death and resurrection. During this festive moment in Galilee, Jesus makes an important sign that recalls the tradition of Exodus.

He gives the people to eat, an immense crowd of over five thousand people in a deserted zone. ‘Desert’ area does not mean an arid place but an uninhabited one. The shores of the Lake of Galilee are splendid areas from the point of view of the natural landscape, but the population was low and far from the villages. There was no way to buy supplies. Jesus, therefore, gives something to eat to this immense crowd of people who follow him not because they are desperate and dying of hunger but to perform a symbolic gesture. John always calls miracles ‘signs’ because he wants to teach us that the works performed by Jesus refer to something else.

A ‘sign’ is one thing that brings to mind another. Jesus heals the paralytic to clarify that he can make man, wounded by sin, capable of fulfilling the law. Jesus gives free food to a large crowd of people to show that he can meet humanity’s desire. Before fulfilling the sign, the evangelist narrates a brief dialogue between Jesus and the disciples. He asks Philip: “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” Literally, in Greek, an adverb is used that should be translated as ‘where from ‘: Πόθεν – Pothen in Greek.

It is a little word that John particularly likes, and he uses it repeatedly in different episodes to emphasize the origin. For example, the servants of Cana knew where the wine came from because they had obeyed Jesus. Instead, the head of the table did not know where it came from. They are the Jewish authorities who do not understand the origin of Jesus and are amazed at the new covenant he proposes. The woman of Samaria provocatively asked Jesus, ‘from where do you have this water that you promise me?’ Without a bucket, the well is deep, ¿from where will Jesus take living water? From himself, the origin of the Spirit; the promised water will be Jesus. The origin of Jesus is the Father.

So now Jesus asks the disciple ‘from where’ can we buy bread to feed all these people. It emphasizes the origin and focuses attention on the economic problem, buying bread for many people. He asks the disciple, ¿do you think the solution is economical? And the disciple says no. Absolutely no! You can’t with all the people that there are here. Bread would cost us 200 denarii, and they would have a piece for each one. We know that a denarius was the wage of a worker for a day’s work, so we could say that thirty denarii were the payment for a month’s work. Two hundred denarii are 200 days of work, of several months—a large sum. If you multiply a thousand euros as an average salary, we could talk about a thousand euros as medium salary; we can speak of 5, 6, or 7 thousand euros of bread to give each a piece; no, for heaven’s sake! We don’t spend all this money; we don’t have all this money to throw away. It’s not the solution.

Andrew intervenes, saying there is a boy who has five barley loaves and a few fish. What is this for so many people? Here the solution to the problem does not come from an economic organization, spending a lot of money to buy bread, but it comes from the generosity of a boy who shares his poor five barley loaves.

Coming back to our reflection, we are used to hearing the story with five loaves, but 5 is the number of the law, the number of the ancient tradition, the law of Moses. Making available that little that one has and sharing it allows feeding all those people. Five barley loaves, offered by the boy, would not be enough but it is necessary the intervention of Jesus who, however, does not create bread from nothing.

In the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew and Luke tell of the temptation of Jesus in which the devil proposes to him to turn the stones of the desert into bread to feed the people. That is not what Jesus does; it would be a diabolical temptation to take the people by the throat, feeding them for free. It is a way to create customers, dependent people, passionate people who follow him because they have an interest: Jesus pays them; he feeds them for free, and those who follow him acclaim him. They would like to make him king. Jesus does not transform all the stones of the desert in bread but starts from the offerings of a boy, a little one, a poor person, a marginal person who enters history and through the grace of Jesus, makes it possible to feed an immense crowd.

That bread is enough for five thousand people, and they still collect the leftover so that nothing be wasted. People are enthusiastic; they are excited about that man who feeds for free. For this, they would like to make him king, but Jesus does not give in. It is a temptation; he does not want to become a king; he does not want to win the favor of the people with gifts. He withdraws to the mountain all alone in such a way as not to be found by the crowd who cheer him.

The disciples themselves feel bad, and they leave him. They get on the boat and go away on their own, but crossing is difficult at night. The evangelist is exceptionally concise in this story. He does not speak of the dismissal of Jesus. It seems that the disciples turn their backs on Jesus, disappointed by the fact that he did not accept to become king. It could be an excellent opportunity to take power, but it was not what Jesus intended to do. Probably, instead, it was what his disciples expected, and on the lake that night of strong wind, the disciples feel the absence of the teacher. They feel their weak condition, people incapable of salvation by human means. Jesus reaches to them.

It is another sign that he performs. It is a theophany; Jesus manifests himself as God who walks on water, which dominates the unstable liquid element. It is the image of evil, chaos, of historical confusion. Just as the economic problem is not a solution through the use of money, but it takes the intervention of generosity and grace, so also the chaotic problem of the sea, of the wind, of the night is not solved with the human ability but takes the presence and power of God. They want to take him in their boat and immediately reach the shore.

It is a moment of conversion of the disciples who realize that alone they cannot and then wish to welcome Jesus in their boat, in their history, in their person, in their life. The following day the crowd chases Jesus. They ate for free; they want to repeat the same thing. They are looking for him. They did not notice the crossing of the lake. In the morning, they look for him where he was in the evening. Someone says he is on the other side; the crowds rush a few kilometers to meet Jesus again; they want an encounter like in the previous day; there is confusion. Jesus, instead of praising those people who seek him, reproaches them telling them: “You are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” You have not understood the meaning of the signs; you simply have a material interest; you want to eat some bread again for free. Today I will not give you anymore, go and buy for yourselves.

This makes us understand how the sign of the multiplication of the loaves is not an intervention of the mercy of Jesus, who feeds the hungry, but it is another type of sign. He wants to show how a person is capable of profoundly nourishing that desire, of removing that desire, that hunger, that thirst, to feel fulfilled. Jesus speaks first of all of the bread of life. “Work hard for food that will last.” The fact that Jesus has given food in the desert inevitably recalls a sign from the Old Testament, the manna. God fed his people in the desert.

The fact that Jesus crossed the sea, walking on water recalls the other great symbol of the Exodus. The passage of the waters is an intervention of salvation with which ‘God passed over the great waters and his footprints remained invisible’ as Psalm 76 says: “The Lord passed over the waters; the Lord has fed his people,” now the Lord educates his people with the word. Jesus forms his listeners by inviting them to listen to his word. The first sense of this speech concerns bread as a metaphor for the word. We remember a verse of Deuteronomy in which it is said that “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

What do we need to live? Bread is not enough. We need the word, and the word that makes us live it is the word of Jesus. ‘It is the word of life, not Moses, who gave you the true bread. It is God, my father, who gives you the true bread from heaven. It is me in person the bread of God,’ that is to say the word of God. It is just what the evangelist John will put at the beginning as the great prologue. The Word, the Logos of God, became flesh. Jesus is the Logos, is the Word of God, the fullness of revelation. Jesus as a word is the bread that gives life. There is a need to listen to him, be nourished by him. It is his word that truly nourishes and satisfies.

The first part of the discourse culminates in verse 51 that marks the passage to the second part, which is appropriately Eucharistic. In verse 51, Jesus says: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever.” That is, whoever listens to my word will find satisfaction and will live forever. “And the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” Here is the passage: the bread that I will give is my flesh that makes the world live. Scholars believe that this expression contains the most archaic form and closest to the words pronounced by Jesus on the evening of the institution of the Eucharist during the Last Supper. John does not tell about the institution of the Eucharist.

In the various scenes of the Passover supper, the fourth gospel does not present the Eucharistic account. Still, the evangelist anticipated it at the previous Passover and proposed it under the figure of this important catechesis with a crescendo. Jesus is the bread as word but promises that he will give (in the future) his flesh to make the world live. “This is my flesh for the life of the world.” Re-translated into Hebrew or in Aramaic could be the most archaic formula of the institution of the Eucharist. Although he has expanded the discourse, John faithfully preserved it, changed the setting, and deepened the theological teaching. In these last verses, Jesus insists on the need to eat his flesh and drink his blood.

We have become accustomed to this language, and it no longer makes many impressions on us, while, in contrast, the first listeners must have been truly troubled by such a speech. It sounded like a proposition of cannibalism. Jesus chose this strong sign through bread to leave us his body. ‘Flesh and blood is a typical expression of the Jewish language to indicate humanity in its condition of weakness. It is not the flesh and blood that revealed it, says Jesus to Peter. “I have not listened to flesh and blood,” says Paul writing to the Galatians. Flesh and blood are a Semitic expression to indicate humanity, and Jesus leaves his humanity assumed by the word as flesh and blood symbolized by the bread and wine that truly become his humanity, which is to be assimilated and by eating bread and drinking the wine of the Jewish Passover Supper, the disciple will have the opportunity to enter into full communion with the flesh and blood of Jesus, with his humanity, with his profound and intensely personal experience because by eating Jesus the disciple will become Jesus.

The vertex expression is found right there where Jesus says: “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” The expression, also in the original Greek, has a double nuance: cause and end. Jesus says: “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father.” ‘The father is the cause of my life, is the origin, the source of my existence. So, whoever eats of me will live for me, will live thanks to me. I will be the cause of his life; I will make him live.’ But the same expression also means the end. “I have life because of the Father,” says Jesus; and in the same way, ‘the one who eats me will live for me. I have the Father as the end. Everything is oriented to him, and so my disciple who will eat of me will live for me, having me as the goal of his or her existence.’

The discourse is difficult to understand, and the evangelist emphasizes that many from that moment abandoned Jesus. It is the moment of crisis; many who followed Jesus were scandalized. They found an obstacle in that speech of Jesus, and they refused him; they did not accept his word. Jesus also asks the other disciples: “¿Do you also want to go away?” ‘The door is open; I do not necessarily hold you by force’ and what follows corresponds to the confession of Peter in the synoptic gospels. The apostle Simon speaks in the name of the other disciples, and he says: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

Also, in this care, the most archaic form of Peter’s confession is preserved by John: “You are the Holy One of God”; ‘we have believed in you, and consequently we have understood, we have known that you are the Holy One, so we do not go anywhere else. We know that you have words that allow you to live fully.’

The crisis is there, but the group of disciples who genuinely believe in Jesus knows the truth of his word and adheres to him and continues to adhere to him despite everything.