Main news for 10 May 2025

Different people perceived Jesus Himself, and everything connected with Him, in different ways. But He Himself always spoke of only one thing: the Kingdom He had brought into the world. He knows that He has nothing else, and no other task stands before Him except making the Kingdom accessible to everyone who seeks. By calling Himself the "bread of life," Jesus wants to convey to His listeners a simple thought, yet one that cannot fit into their consciousness: He has brought them the fullness of life. Not temporal life, which is here today and gone tomorrow, but true life, the life that has no end because it has no beginning either, abiding wholly in God and being revealed in His Kingdom. As we can see, those listening to Jesus do not understand at all how such life can exist. Separate, concrete manifestations of this life are more familiar and understandable to them.

Manna, for example: here everything is more or less clear. God worked a miracle by His power, and a certain (in general, small) part of the life now being opened to the world in fullness turned out to be connected with this manna. Jesus, however, speaks not of a part but of the whole. But here a misunderstanding arises: this whole is inaccessible to an ordinary earthly gaze. It is invisible to it. Manna is simpler: there is something visible to everyone, and this visible thing changes its properties in such a way that the effect of the invisible becomes completely undeniable. But the fullness of the life of the Kingdom turns out to be completely inaccessible to physical sight.

Something else is needed here: the will. It is the will that determines a person's spiritual life and spiritual condition. And only by the will can one see and experience that fullness of the life of the Kingdom of which Jesus speaks. But this is precisely what His listeners are completely unprepared for. They want something external. They want signs, preferably supernatural ones, that would serve as proof that Jesus truly is the Messiah. And from the Messiah they expect, above all, miracles like feeding thousands of people with a couple of loaves. Miracles that would change their life, but not radically. And certainly would not change them themselves.

Therefore they do not need the Kingdom. After all, one cannot enter the Kingdom so simply; here one will have to change, and seriously. But those listening to Jesus want to enter the Messiah's Kingdom without radically changing anything in themselves. Therefore they do not need the fullness of life either. What use is it if, in their present condition, most of those listening cannot even see it? Manna is better here. Better still is miraculous bread, enough for everyone, and free. But this is not the Kingdom that the Savior brought into the world. It does not save. And it does not give true life.

Joh 6:35

NOTES

Today's reading helps us better understand what is usually called Jesus' "messianic secret." In speaking of it, people mean the fact that Jesus Himself, until the last days of His earthly ministry, almost never spoke directly about His messiahship, at least not openly. The evangelist's account takes us back to the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves (vv. 1-14). And the reaction to it, as we can see, was an attempt to proclaim Jesus "king," to make Him the leader of a new messianic movement (v. 15). This is no surprise: according to the commonly accepted ideas of that time, the Messiah was to become king, restore an independent Jewish state, and introduce in it laws corresponding to the Torah. But Jesus, of course, was not going to become the leader of any religious-political movement.

But Jesus had another, more important reason to conceal His messiahship. He Himself speaks of it directly to those who went looking for Him in Galilee: most of the people seeking a meeting with Him did so not because they thirsted for the Kingdom, but because they wanted, in time of need, always to be able to receive free bread (v. 26). Jesus, however, speaks with them about eternal life and about the main thing without which one cannot partake of it: trust in the One whom God sent into the world to give people the Kingdom (vv. 27-29).

But they do not understand Him. They ask Him: where are the proofs that Your words are true (v. 30)? And at once they give an example of what proofs would convince them: manna from heaven, as in the days of Moses in the wilderness (v. 31). Jesus again tells them that the Kingdom is greater than any miracle, and that the bread of the Kingdom is more important than manna (vv. 32-33). And again they do not understand Him.

His listeners cannot grasp that with the Savior's coming into the world a new era has begun, and that what happened to them on the shore of Lake Gennesaret was not a miracle in the sense in which manna was a miracle. Simply by being with Jesus, they found themselves in the Kingdom and lived for a while according to its laws, but, as we can see, they did not understand fully what had happened to them. That is why they ask Jesus for bread and expect to receive it just as their fathers once received manna from God (v. 34). And Jesus again and again tries to explain to them that the point is not bread, but the Kingdom and that fullness of God's life which is given there to everyone, so that no manna will be needed there anymore.

A miracle is the Kingdom's invasion of our world, the manifestation of its laws where completely different rules usually operate. But now the Kingdom is entering the world, transforming it, and the times of miracles are passing. The time of the Kingdom is beginning - open to everyone who seeks it and wants to enter.

In today's Gospel reading Jesus says, "This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up on the last day." These words are an answer to the classic question asked...

How does Jesus Himself understand the tasks before Him? First of all, it is striking that He does not try to formulate any tasks on His own at all. At first glance, the One who contained in Himself all the fullness of God could have been much more decisive, especially considering the decisiveness with which ordinary people sometimes formulate the goals and tasks of their service to God. But Jesus, being the Messiah, sees the meaning of His messianic ministry in having no goals of His own and setting no tasks of His own before Himself. He relies entirely on the will of the Father, and He has no works of His own. And the Father, as it appears, sets before Him one main task, to which everything else is subordinated: to save as many people as possible. This is not about Judgment, not about condemning some and justifying others. Of course, a person's sins hinder his salvation. But, as it appears, even the righteous cannot count on salvation without the help of the Messiah sent by God into the world.

As in any rescue operation, only the rescue of each and every person can be considered complete success. But there are, it appears, certain obstacles that can hinder complete success. The sins a person commits are one such obstacle. There may be others, but they appear to depend little or not at all on the person. But the measure of sin that complicates the rescue operation depends first of all on the person. And this is no surprise: salvation is evidently connected with the possibility of entering the Kingdom, the door to which Jesus opens.

In its present state the world is doomed, and only the one who manages to enter the Kingdom and become part of it can be saved. Here the question of sin and righteousness becomes decisive, for any sin inevitably becomes an obstacle for a person on the way into the Kingdom. But Jesus allows, of course with the Father's consent, everyone to begin again, with a clean slate, making one more attempt to start life over. On one condition: this attempt will be made not in the fallen world, but in the Kingdom. Then, freed from the undivided power that sin has over fallen man, each person can try to begin a new life in the full sense of the word.

FAQ

What should be understood by the form of resurrection, described both in the Gospel (Christ's words that on the Day of Judgment He will resurrect those who live according to His word) and in the Apocalypse (the description of the judgment of the dead)? What will be the form, including the physical one, of the life of a resurrected person? When the risen Christ appeared before the disciples, in order to dispel their fear, He asked them for food and ate with them. Furthermore, knowing of Thomas's unbelief, He Himself asked him to touch the wounds from the crucifixion. Does it follow from this that the resurrected will also have a material form? Is this so, and what then will the spiritual component be?

Yes, you are right, the resurrected will also have a material component, and the body, judging by the wounds on the Body of the Risen Christ, will be the very same. In this lies the radical difference between the Christian faith and spiritualism, which considers that after the death of the flesh only the soul will live, as well as the belief in the reincarnation of souls. The ancient Apostles' Creed states that we believe in "the resurrection of the body", and our current Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed states that we "look for the resurrection of the dead" also in the flesh. This is fundamentally important, because Christianity considers a human being to be a creature consisting of an immaterial soul and a material body. The flesh alone, just like the soul alone, is remarkable, but it is not a human being. God desires specifically human beings, and it is precisely them that He came to save.

At the same time, the flesh of the Risen Christ differed from our flesh; in particular, it was not subject to the laws of this world. The Apostle Paul, speaking of the end of the world, says: "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed" (Co1 15:51-53). On this basis, Christians believe that in the resurrection of the dead our flesh will become as it was intended by God prior to the Fall, and they call it transfigured. This resurrection of us in our own, yet transfigured flesh, in its union with our own soul, accomplished by God, will become the beginning of the general transfiguration of creation.

The spiritual component, therefore, will not disappear either, and the resurrected person will be a human being, not a soul with little wings from ancient pagan myths. What will this spiritual component be? This will apparently be determined by our life here. If you were dead to sin and alive to God, and already here became a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, then your transfigured life has already begun here, and at the general resurrection it will unfold in all its fullness. But if you were dead to God and alive to sin…

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