Ex 16: 2-4.12-15; Ps 77 (78); Eph 4: 17.20-24; Jn 6: 24-35

In the wilderness of temptations, Jesus refused to turn stones into bread. He had replied to the tempter, quoting from Deuteronomy: “Man will not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4: 4; cf. Deut 8: 3). Now Jesus does not hesitate to divide the bread to satisfy not his own, but the hunger of the crowds. Together with the bread, however, she gives the word of him. If, together with bread, we feed on the word of God, it will not only be our body that will be invigorated, but our spirit, our freedom. St. Paul reminds the Ephesians: if we listen to Christ and let ourselves be instructed by him, then we can abandon the old man and put on the new man, “created according to God in justice and true holiness”. The bread that Jesus gives us is a bread that remains for eternal life precisely because it not only nourishes our existence, but transforms it, making it pass from the logic of the old man, who “corrupts himself following deceptive passions”, to that of he new man, who is not corrupted, remains beyond death because he shares the justice and holiness that God offers him, through his bread and his word. The crowds look for Jesus, but they realize that he is no longer there, where he fed them; they find it “beyond the sea”. This passage to the other shore has a symbolic value: the bread of Jesus makes us pass to the other shore, from the old man to the new creature.

Commentary by Comunità di Dumenza

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey