[After Jesus had fed the five thousand men, his disciples saw him walking on the sea.]
The next day, the crowd that remained across the sea
saw that there had been only one boat there,
and that Jesus had not gone along with his disciples in the boat,
but only his disciples had left.
Other boats came from Tiberias
near the place where they had eaten the bread
when the Lord gave thanks.
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there,
they themselves got into boats
and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
And when they found him across the sea they said to him,
“Rabbi, when did you get here?”
Jesus answered them and said,
“Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me
not because you saw signs
but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Do not work for food that perishes
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.
For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.”
So they said to him,
“What can we do to accomplish the works of God?”
Jesus answered and said to them,
“This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”
What is “the bread of God that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world?” It is the eucharist, the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. When we partake in the eucharist, we commune with Him and bring Him literally into our bodies. He is so close to us in communion that he literally becomes part of us, or more accurately, His presense helps to re-align our will and our nature with His, and as a result we slowly become more and more like Him.
Interestingly in Greek there are 2 words for body and two words for soul. The two words for body are Bios and Sarx. Bios is the natural physical or bodily life that all plants and animals share. Sarx is the fallen human flesh of this world, the flesh mired in concupicense and sin. The two words for Spirit are Pnuema and Zoe. Pneuma is the breath of life, it is the spiritual soul that inhabits all things that live. Zoe is the supernatural life, the higher human spirit that god whishes us all to have so that we can share communion with Him.
When Jesus says that He is the bread from heaven that will give life to the world, He is not referring to the natural physical body (bios), but the fallen broken human body (sarx). And when He talks of life here, he is not referring to the spiritual breath of life (pnuema) that inhabits all thing, but the heavenly spirit (zoe) that God wishes for us all so that we can commune with Him perfectly in heaven. Thus, Jesus is saying here that when we eat of this body, His battered, beaten, and broken body on the cross. The flesh (sarx) that took upon it all of the sins of the world. When we eat this body, like the jews ate the ground up remains of the golden calf in the desert, it is then that we restore the covenant that Jesus established for us in His sacrifice on the cross, and we redeem ourselves in the eyes of God. And when we are redeemed in the eyes of God, that will give eternal life (zoe).
This is why it is so important to understand that the eucharist is NOT just a symbol. It is the REAL body blood, soul and divinity of Jesus. And Just like the covenants of the old testaments were ratified with a sacrificial offering, that all parties would consume to establish the covenenant between them. In the eucharist, Jesus is both the one offering the covenenant (as God) and the one that is the sacrifice that must be shared in communion for the ratification of the covenant. His flesh then.., is the life for the world.
Our souls know this implicitly because we were created by Him in His image. But the world confuses and lies to us and convinces us that it is just bread and wine. But no matter where you are on your journey of faith the reality is that our souls yearn for this connection with God, but it is our minds that keep us away. We spend so much time separating ourselves from that closeness, whether it is games or social media, or just flat-out rejection, we tell ourselves that we don’t want to be a slave to Christ, we want (like the devil did) to make Him a slave to us. We must reject those lies, and submit to God’s will for us.
This is the work that Jesus is referring to in todays reading. The work of pursuing Jesus in the eucharist, staying in the state of grace, and working to do Gods will in the world and not your own. It makes sense that turning toward the eucharist, and ordering our lives to be in line with the creator, is the action that the Lord requires of us, to have communion with Him, to bring Him, litterally into our bodies, and to rest in the fact that we are now the new temples of his divine presence…, the new tabernacle of the lord.
