THE BREAD OF LIFE DISCOURSE (I)
Food that endures forever
In
the Sunday Masses of these last few weeks we have heard portions of the “bread
of life discourse,” in which Jesus insists over and over again that he is food
for all. It is a long section of John’s Gospel, one that begins after the scene
in which Jesus feeds a crowd with five loaves of bread and two fish (Jn 6:1-15)
and then covers the rest of chapter six until its ending (6:71).
I
would like to reflect a bit upon two moments of this chapter. The first is Jn 6:27, when on the day after
the multiplication of the loaves Jesus talks to the same crowd he has fed and
tells them: “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures
for eternal life”.
Beyond
the more spiritual (and certainly appropriate) interpretation, according to
which with these words Jesus wants to underline the importance of living with
our eyes fixed on horizons that go beyond the present world, it seems to me
that the text also allows for a more practical or “earthly” interpretation.
Jesus
sees the crowd: they have gone after for him because they had been given to eat.
He immediately understands that a relationship of dependency has been created
between the crowd and himself. They are, let us remember, the same men and
women from whom he moved away because “they were going to come and carry him
off to make him king” (6:15). Jesus knows that no dependency is good, that the
Father wants us to be free, autonomous. That is why he encourages them to work
for the bread that endures forever. “The food that perishes” is the nourishment
that others have to give you, for you do not know how to generate it. Someone
offers it to you, you eat it and right away you need to extend your hand again
asking for more. The food that endures forever is the nourishment that one
knows how to produce, which therefore allows someone to be autonomous. The food
that never ends is analogous to the interior spring of living water that Jesus
promised to the Samaritan woman (Jn 4:14), which will free her from having to
go to the well day after day. Jesus is inviting those around him to discover
their own dignity, to experience God’s presence in themselves, and thus to
understand that they have no need of any king, chief or charismatic leader with
answers to every question, since they have in themselves the potential to move
on, in their own right. To make this discovery is to find the bread that
endures forever.
This
passage can thus shed light over the way in which we live our faith and carry
out our ministry. It can help us to understand that every time that we, as
priests, religious or committed lay people create dependencies from those whom
we serve towards us, then we are using criteria that are very different from
those of the Gospel. Our mission is the same mission that moved Jesus: to help
those we serve so that they can discover their own capacities to grow and
evolve (as difficult as this may be). To proclaim the Gospel is, above anything
else, to help individuals become aware of their own worth as loved sons and
daughters of the Father. That is why our message is a liberating one: because
it implies the realization of God’s presence in oneself –the living bread that
endures and the spring of water that never ends.
Obviously,
it will then be desirable that from a situation of healthy autonomy we may be
willing to link our lives to the lives of others, forming community with them.
It would indeed be very sad if we were to use our newly obtained autonomy to
lead selfish and individualistic lives, with an air of “since I am capable to
provide for my own needs, then I am interested in no one else.” But this is a
risk that we must run, because what is undeniable is that only free persons,
working for the bread that endures forever, will be able to create a Christian
community worthy of this name. Individuals who are dependent on the bread that
perishes may form tribes, clans, gangs, sects or caricatures of family, but
never authentic communities living the Gospel of Jesus.
In
a later reflection we will meditate on the other moment of the bread of life
discourse that we wanted to comment.
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