Moses said to the people: “Remember how for forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments. He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord. “Do not forget the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery; who guided you through the vast and terrible desert with its saraph serpents and scorpions, its parched and waterless ground; who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock and fed you in the desert with manna, a food unknown to your fathers.”

Jesus said to the Jewish crowds: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. 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. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

The Jews reacted when Jesus said to them, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven” (v 51). If we were there, we would react the same. Just a simple note. The Gospel of John which contains this discourse on the bread of life was written long after Jesus had died and resurrected. The community of John must have understood it better, after years and years of eucharistic celebrations and reflections.

The Gospel writer wants to encourage those who are not yet receiving the Eucharist to consider their position from arguing to accepting it with faith. It should be easy for the Jews, since they celebrate the Passover eating bread and drinking wine each year. They are familiar with the concept of the bread from heaven, the manna in the desert. Only that they must migrate from the original meaning to the new meaning given by the Son of God.