NOTES for Joh 6:30-35

In today's Gospel reading we can see behavior that is natural and common to all people. The crowd, having satisfied its hunger and listening to the Lord's words about the bread of God "which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world," quite understandably asks that this bread never run out. And all the more so if this is the bread that "gives life to the world"! How much this resembles Jesus' meeting with the Samaritan woman (see John 4:5-30). When this woman hears about water that satisfies thirst so that a person will never thirst, she asks Jesus, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water."

How alike we human beings are in our desires. When we hear about something miraculous, we want to get hold of it, to have a direct relationship to it, especially when it promises direct benefit. In this way, in any person one can find this thirst for miraculous bread and water that give life. And in both cases the Lord says strange words: that He Himself is the bread in one case and the water in the other. It is precisely the unexpectedness of these words and their meaning that can lead a person to another, deeper level.