NOTES for Joh 6:56-69

Every person seeks joy and seeks happiness. He searches wherever he can. And he even finds something. But what he finds is not yet true happiness. It comes and goes without giving a person an answer to what God alone can reach. This “happiness” disappears, leaving behind an even greater thirst: a thirst for something genuine, something that will never pass away but will “abide forever.” In today’s passage from John’s Gospel, Christ points out that only the food He gives us is eternal: His Flesh and Blood (see John 6:56–58). And although the disciples have not yet tasted this food, they can already say that they do not want to seek anything else: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). They understand that they have found what they may have been seeking all their lives until then, and that turning aside or returning to what came before makes absolutely no sense for them. In the same way, the centurion Cornelius feels that God is calling him, and here is the fulfillment of everything for which he has waited so long. And so that the apostle Peter will not hinder the growth of the Kingdom of God through his stereotypes, the Lord first has to do some formative work with him, so that those who seek God may finally come to Him.