This morning’s Gospel reading is John 6:51–58:

Jesus said to the crowds:

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

The world takes a lot out of us in this life. We toil and work, and yet it never seems to be enough. We sometimes even express this as having pieces of ourselves taken from us by all of those who want something, whether they deserve it or not. Telemarketers, lenders, employers, sometimes even friends and family ... they all want a piece of us for their own purposes, or it certainly can feel that way at times. 

And we resent it when that overwhelms us, no?

Imagine when the entire world needs you for their own salvation -- even if they do not know it yet. And when Jesus offers the world literally pieces of Himself through the rest of time for that purpose, they put Him to death for offering it. 

That is what's happening in this passage, part of the Bread of Life discourse in the Gospel of John.  What does this tell us? The world wants pieces of us on its terms, not ours, and that was even more true of what the Judean remnant of the Israelites wanted from its Messiah. In fact, we just recently watched season four of The Chosen, which stages this issue very effectively in the final episodes, if somewhat out of chronological sequence. 

Jesus promised the return of the Davidic kingdom in eternity; the Judeans wanted it for themselves in the moment. Jesus promised that His kingdom would be for all humanity; the Judeans wanted it for themselves. If the Messiah didn't fit their desires, then they would find ways to either bend the Messiah to their will or reject Him entirely. 

And this is the real irony ... all of them wanted the Messiah. They truly and sincerely yearned for Him, as a way not just to win their liberty but also as a validation from the Lord that they were truly loved. The Judeans were not wicked as much as misled by their own ambitions, and perhaps lulled into a sense that the Messiah would do all of the hard work for them. They did not want "a man of sorrows" as their Messiah, one that promised no ease in this life but instead ease in the next. They wanted someone who could deliver them a military and political victory that would allow them to find their ease in this life. 

They wanted their pieces of God on their own terms, not His. Even when Jesus literally offered them His own flesh and blood for salvation as the Passover Lamb, they rejected Him. And as we learn in the subsequent passages in John 6, they abandoned Jesus in droves. The crowds that had followed Him dissipated on hearing this teaching, given not as parable or symbolism but as literal instruction to feed on His flesh and blood. "This is a hard saying," many of them said, "who can listen to it?"

What does Jesus do? He doesn't call them back and explain this as a parable. Instead, Jesus challenges them for taking offense at His words. When they still leave, Jesus then asks the Twelve if they will stay or leave, and Simon Peter makes his profession of faith: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

But it is still a hard saying, and remains so to this day. Its role in the institution of the Eucharist is still a difficult topic of division between the Catholics and Orthodox that profess a literal transubstantiation and other Christian communities that treat it symbolically. But the idea that the Messiah had to be sacrificed for our salvation rather than just rule in benevolent glory here on Earth is also a hard mystery to accept, too. 

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son," John writes in his most well-known Gospel passage, "that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." But why would God sacrifice His Son, especially in such a brutal and demeaning manner, to effect salvation? We can reason the answers to this -- the role of the sacrificial lamb in Passover, a completion of Abraham's offering of Isaac, and of course the demonstration of the destruction of the power of death. However, in truth, even the most well-reasoned arguments pale in the light of the Cross and its humiliation of the Divine, and it still remains too much of a mystery for us to fully explain.

But now, as then, the mystery is the point. We are not meant to find the Lord through logic or even science, although both can help us grasp the contours of His creation. Even philosophy is a tool for us to reveal the Lord to us, through inexact means. We are meant to come to the Lord in faith, despite the difficulty of His teachings. We are meant to find Him with our hearts first and then with our minds. 

We eat His flesh and drink His blood because He told us to do so. We accept and embrace the Cross because He willingly allowed Himself to die on it for us. He gave the world every piece of Himself to satisfy our yearning for Him even when we fail to recognize those yearnings or comprehend what it means to be saved, now just as it was in the passage we read today in John's Gospel. That is faith, and faith is a decision to believe and accept His will over our own reason and desires, even when we can't explain it. And maybe especially when we can't explain it. 

 And the only piece of us that Jesus truly desires from us is our hearts. Can we offer that in joy rather than resentment? Can we set aside our own ambitions and desires for what salvation and justice look like to us and trust in His salvation and justice instead? Or will we walk away because it just gets too hard?

Previous reflections on these readings:

• The solemnity of revival: Sunday reflection (2023)
• The food unknown for our journey: Sunday reflection (2020)
• Sunday reflection: John 6:51-58 (2015)

The front page image is a detail from "Institution of the Eucharist" by Gerard de Lairesse, c. 1700. On display at the Louvre. Via Wikimedia Commons. 

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.