Jesus shows that it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven, but God who, through Moses, fed all those people in the desert.

 

Jesus shows that it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven, but God who, through Moses, fed all those people in the desert. Today, the same God gives a new Bread, the Bread from Heaven, but not a new type of manna, something material and temporary; today God gives you His own Son as food, because it is the Bread that is a Person, the very person of Jesus, who, unlike the manna, feeds for eternal life, true life, life in its fullness. Jesus is the bread that gives itself, “the bread that came down from heaven” (a reference to the incarnation), who is given for the life of the world, he is the bread that demands total adherence to his person.

5. That crowd is able to understand Jesus as the one who has the power to feed freely, who has love and compassion, and who, for this very reason, must be king, because he will continue to feed everyone, granting abundance to the poorest. This crowd continues to have a materialistic view of everyday life, not caring so much about the fact of faith, the search for God for God’s sake, but always for the sake of something material. It is still like this today. So many pray, ask, strive and wear themselves out only for perishable things; they make their existence a continuous search for the superficial. Worse still, many use their faith to profit at the expense of the most unprepared, the most ignorant about faith and its importance as a person. Those who are childish in faith are deceived, those who seek extraordinary signs, spectacles, deceitful illusions; also those who are very simple, without much depth, but, being at the disposal of skillful deceivers, succumb to their madness. 6. Signs have their importance, but they should not be accepted as absolute. We are not saved by a faith of signs, but by a faith that satisfies the heart and allows us to make a total surrender of ourselves to the Kingdom of God. This is why we must not remain attached to the manna of the Old Testament, but, using it as a preparation and a sign, reach the Bread of the New Covenant; be able to go beyond the miracle and adhere to the One who performs it; not cling to the miracle, but to the Person; detach ourselves from the bread itself and embrace, definitively, the One who became Bread by the will of the Father. Well, the crowd is hungry for this bread, and, like the Samaritan woman who wanted living water, she said: “Lord, give us this bread always.” All we need to do is turn completely to Him, putting into practice listening to the Word of God, living exclusively by Faith in Him, nourishing ourselves by Him in the Eucharist and making our own lives a gift for others.