NOTES for Joh 6:27-33

Today we continue reading chapter 6 of John's Gospel, absorbing Christ's word about the Bread of Life in small 'portions.' Two important points in today's passage draw our attention. First, the Lord speaks of manna from heaven, God's miraculous gift during the wandering in the wilderness, as a foreshadowing of the true Heavenly Bread. This gives us grounds for certain comparisons. Just as manna sustained the life of people dying of hunger in the wilderness, so Christ's Body—the Heavenly Bread—sustains the spiritual life of people dying of spiritual hunger. Just as manna obeyed not the laws of nature but God's will, so the Heavenly Bread conceals a certain invisible reality within it.

The second crucial point lies in Christ's words that the Heavenly Bread gives life to the whole world. Since the earliest times, this has given Christian thinkers grounds to compare Christ and His Body—the Heavenly Bread—with the Tree of Life that God planted in the midst of paradise. Thus, by feeding on this Heavenly Bread, we return to the paradise we lost and find the source of life prepared for us from the beginning.

The Ikos at Matins for the Nativity of Christ expresses this thought as follows: 'Bethlehem has opened Eden—come, let us see; we have found hidden food. Come, let us receive the blessings of paradise in the cave. There an unwatered shoot has appeared, bringing forth forgiveness; there an undug well has been found, from which David longed to drink. There the Virgin, having borne a Child, has quenched the thirst of both Adam and David. Therefore let us hasten to where the Child has been born—the God before all ages.'