Blog # 203 John Chapter 6 - 4

blog # 203 John chapter 6 - 4 "Bread from Heaven". "Food for a life that will last forever". That sounded attractive to the people and they ask how to get it. Jesus tells them it is by FAITH they will receive such food. They do not like His answer and ask Him to prove Himself for them. In asking that faith be proven they are asking that it be destroyed. The argument continues. "Do for us something like Moses did for our ancestors in the desert, giving them bread from Heaven to eat". "It was not Moses who gave them the bread you speak of, but my Father. The story of your ancestors in the desert is continuing now, in us. As for Moses in the desert, the bread he gave was from God and a SIGN of God's presence among them, His protection over them, and God's love for them, so the bread I gave you yesterday is a similar SIGN for you, of God's presence, protection, and love for you, through me. Jesus was the Father's bread for their eternal life. That was what they would have to believe if they were to receive more than the passing gifts of ordinary 'bread', the good things of their temporary natural life on earth. That was God's design. Jesus had come to tell them this, and then to live it out in Himself. The price He would pay for this bread was His greatest act of love, the giving of His life in their name into the Father's will on the wood of the Cross. Surely if Jesus did not want any of the food that came from His miracle with the fish and the bread to be wasted, He would not want His love for the Father, or Their love for us to be wasted. From this we can easily appreciate how sad Jesus must have been when many of those listening to Him did not believe what He said and walked away. He witnessed His love for them being wasted. At this point, in my imagination I see Jesus standing before the people something like a General of an army who has presented a plan of battle to his soldiers. They do not understand the nature and purpose of faith and do not want the faith-based plan Jesus proposed. He has a choice to make. Should he change the plan of battle, or see a good number of his soldiers desert him? If Jesus would perhaps change His plan from Flesh and Blood to bread and grape juice that would be all that would be required. But He did not do that. Like the General watching his soldiers go, Jesus turns to the Apostles, the officers in His army,as it were, and asks the question: "Do you also want to go away?" The Father sent Jesus to proclaim and achieve a certain plan. It was not to be changed. The Father's love and power is that strong. Flesh and Blood remains. The question comes again two thousand years later: Do you also want to go away? And the answer comes by faith in the divinity of Jesus and trust in His infinite love. "...My Body given for your"; ...My blood poured out for you" "There is no greater love than this , to lay down one's life for a friend." "O Sacrament most holy, O Sacrament Divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment Thine!"