THE TEXT BELOW IS THE TRANSCRIPTION OF THE VIDEO COMMENTARY BY FR. FERNANDO ARMELLINI

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A good Sunday to all. 

Last week, we heard the crowds at Capernaum tell Jesus that in the desert, Moses had given them the bread that came down from heaven. But Jesus answered immediately: ‘That is not true. Moses never gave them the bread that came down from heaven. He gave them the manna, which is the material bread that nourishes biological life on this earth.’ He has given them the food all animals need, but it is not enough for humans. 

The Jews do not recognize the same three kingdoms we do: the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. They say there is a fourth kingdom—the human kingdom—and that those who belong to this fourth need to nourish themselves with a different kind of bread, namely the wisdom of God. For the Jews, this wisdom, which is the bread that humanizes, comes from heaven and is embodied in the Torah. 

With this distinction between the material bread that sustains physical life and the bread that comes from heaven, the crowds could only agree with Jesus. However, he added another statement that was unacceptable to the Jews: “I am this bread which came down from heaven.” It is on this point that the crowds react. 

Let us listen: 

The Jews murmured about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ They asked, ‘Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?’

Faced with what he said, the crowds began to murmur against Jesus. The Greek verb used, “γογγύζετε” (gongízete), does not mean to grumble or murmur but to dispute, be indignant, or firmly reject what Jesus has said. What is the reason for this scandalous reaction to what Jesus said? There are two reasons. The first is that the pious Israelite is convinced that he already has the bread from heaven, the Torah, the wisdom of God. 

This Torah is the bread that sustains and defines humanity. For example, it instructs: do not kill; animals are the ones that kill. If you belong to the human race, you must not kill, and this distinguishes you as human. It also guides you in handling sexuality, because, unlike animals that live out their sexuality for species preservation, humans are different. That’s why it tells you that if you want to be part of the human race, you should not commit adultery. It advises against holding a grudge in your heart and emphasizes that you should worship only one God to be truly human, with no other idols. 

The Israelite believes he needs no other bread. He feels fully human when he follows the entire Torah, given from heaven as a gift from God. Israel was and still is proud of this gift, which makes it feel special among all the peoples on earth. Deuteronomy chapter 4 says: “The other peoples, when they hear of this perfect law, will say: ‘This is the only wise people that exists in the world.'” 

I want to emphasize Israel’s love for the Torah because it’s important to remember. Every year, at the end of the Feast of Tents, the Israelites celebrate ‘Simchat Torah,’ the joy of the Torah. They dance and hold the Torah scroll close in synagogues, as a husband embraces his wife. This represents Israel’s gratitude for this gift from God. 

The Torah scrolls must be written by rabbis; it takes a year and a half to complete the entire Torah, and if even one of the 304,805 letters that make up the Torah is incorrect, the scroll becomes unusable. The Torah scroll is kept in the holiest place in the synagogue, the sacred ark, the ărōn Kodesh, and in front of it is a veil, usually embroidered with a Menorah, which symbolizes the light emanating from that ărōn Kodesh. During readings—those who have been to Israel might have noticed this—they do not mark the text in the Torah with a finger because the text is sacred, but with a small pointer. Finally, when a scroll is no longer usable, you cannot throw it away, not even a piece of it; instead, you must keep it and bury it in a cemetery. That closes this parenthesis, but it’s important to remember Israel’s love for the Torah. 

In this context, Jesus makes an unprecedented claim to the Jews that he is the incarnation of God’s wisdom. They respond by asking him: ‘Who do you think you are, and how can you claim to be the incarnation of the human?’ This is why they respond in a challenging and determined manner. 

And now, the second reason for their rejection. ‘You are a carpenter’s son, and the wisdom of God can’t be incarnated in a carpenter, and therefore, there is no need to read the Torah, but only to look at you, since you are the embodiment of the Torah. No, this is too much.’ Let’s try to clarify this. We know that Jews, Muslims, and Christians refer to sacred texts: the Torah for Jews and the Quran for Muslims. In fact, the Quran mentions that Jews, Muslims, and Christians are called ‘the people of the book’ 54 times. However, there is a significant difference we must understand to grasp what Jesus is saying. 

Jews and Muslims have God’s wisdom guiding their lives, embodied in the Torah and the Koran, both of which came from heaven. For Christians, God’s wisdom is not found in a book but became flesh in Nazareth, in the womb of Mary. It’s true that through a book we learn about Jesus; we see, hear, and touch Him through the Gospel. However, the book is merely a tool for finding Jesus, who is the wisdom that descended from heaven. People hunger for this bread, and until they find and absorb it—until they find Jesus of Nazareth—they will never be truly satisfied or fully human. 

What is the message for us today? Who are these Jews who answer Jesus in Capernaum? Why does the evangelist John speak of the Jews when we are in Galilee? They are all Galileans there. In John’s Gospel, the term ‘Jew’ represents everyone who is satisfied with the food they have and does not want more; it is enough. The Christian respects all humanisms and appreciates the beauty and humanizing elements contained in the Torah. It certainly points us in the right direction for how to live as humans, but it is not the final goal; it does not represent the perfection of humanity; it does not tell us that, to be human, we need to forgive unconditionally, seventy times seven. It doesn’t say that we need to love, do good, and even give our lives for the enemy, for the one who has wronged us. The wisdom of heaven, incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, reaches that point. And, therefore, we affirm that beyond that, it is impossible to achieve; and if you do not get there, you are not yet fully a person. 

The Jews mentioned in today’s Gospel are not those of Capernaum; they are the ones who are no longer alive. They are all those who today believe they are satisfied with the wisdom they possess. This can happen to people who follow other forms of humanism: Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim humanisms. But, in this sense, being Jewish also includes the baptized, the Christian who may still be very far from truly understanding Christ and from fully embracing the perfect man that is Jesus of Nazareth. They may have tasted some crumbs of the Gospel, but then they stopped at a good suggestion and didn’t go further to take in all of this bread. So, they haven’t yet truly grasped the humanism of Jesus of Nazareth. It’s the Jewish part inside each of us. 

And now Jesus helps us recognize these Jews within us, so we can see how he defends his position and justifies rejecting the bread from heaven, which is Christ. Let us listen: 

Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Stop murmuring among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him on the last day. It is written in the prophets: ‘They shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.’ 

Previously, the Jews murmured against Jesus; now they murmur among themselves and with others. They have heard a shocking statement. Instead of confronting Jesus for clarification, they begin to murmur among themselves, that is, to dispute what he has said, but they do so among themselves. This is what happens today: when we meet Jesus through the proposal of his Gospel and his word, inevitably, our way of thinking, reasoning, and living is called into question; it is altered because that way of reasoning is as far from ours as the sky is from the earth, and then what do we do? 

Not everyone is willing to accept this word and make a change. We are instinctively inclined to defend our positions, protect our convictions, and uphold what we have always done and believed. Even practicing Christians can reject the evangelical proposal. Today we have a light of the Gospel, a light on Christ that we did not have a few decades ago. In the face of this new bread, even many Christians prefer the bread they have been eating up to that moment, rejecting the newness of Christ. 

How do they justify their choice, and how do they defend their position against the provocative proposal in the Gospel? They behave exactly like the Jews of Capernaum. They start to murmur and protest, not directly at the Gospel, but among themselves. In other words, they seek out another Jew who thinks like them, confront each other to confirm they are right and should continue living this way. And the other Jew will say, ‘forget it, he’s a heretic… someone in love with new things, with fashion, but moving away from true tradition.’ This is why the Jew associates with another Jew just to avoid confrontation with the Gospel, with Christ. 

If the inner Jew within us instinctively prevents us from converting, Jesus’ battle is lost. That is why Jesus speaks to us about the need to recognize the heavenly Father’s intervention. The Father lifts the veil that is Jesus; his Gospel is the bread of life that humanizes you. It is not our conquest; it is a free gift from God that draws us to Christ. 

It states that we will all be taught by God. What does this mean? Our DNA contains an instinctive attraction to the Father in heaven because we are his sons and daughters. This attraction causes us to resonate with the words and person of Jesus of Nazareth. An inner voice tells us that what he says is humanizing and true, helping us become like him, truly human. 

When we hear in the Gospel: ‘do not cling to the goods of this world, don’t compete to accumulate, give it all for love,’ we recognize that this inner voice is correct. To be human means to share our goods with our brothers and sisters; in the face of a wrong received, you hear a voice inside you that urges you not to take revenge, to turn the other cheek; an inner voice affirms that he is right. To be a person means to turn the other cheek and not seek revenge. Jesus says that whoever welcomes Christ as the bread from heaven has eternal life, not that they will have it in the future as a reward. When one follows Christ and his way of life, one becomes aligned with one’s own life, the life that lasts for eternity, the life nourished with the wisdom from God, with the bread from heaven. 

And now Jesus begins to present himself as bread to be eaten. He still does not speak of the Eucharist but of bread to be assimilated, what comes from heaven, which is him. Let us listen: 

I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever. The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. 

Jesus has spoken about bread, but only at this point in his speech does he introduce the verb ‘to eat.’ To the Jews listening to him, he says, ‘Your fathers in the wilderness ate manna, but the manna was not bread that came down from heaven; it nourished a life that perishes; in fact, they all died.’ “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” 

What is Jesus telling us? But first, let’s try to understand, because it is not difficult and it is extremely important for our lives. If Jesus had given us material bread, we would be grateful, but it would not be a great gift, because it would be for a life that perishes. He is now speaking to us of the gift of a life that is eternal. 

First, the verb ‘to eat’ is essential to understanding the Eucharist, which, over the centuries, has had its meaning obscured by many devotions. The verb to eat—faguein—is repeated 11 times in this chapter. Then there is another much stronger verb, ‘trogein’ in Greek, meaning to grind or chew, and a third verb—bere—which will be repeated three times. Jesus is not yet speaking of the Eucharist but is preparing the subject for its true meaning. 

Let’s understand that the “bread of life” metaphor in the Bible symbolizes the word of God. The prophet Ezekiel says: ‘The Lord says to the prophet, son of man, eat this scroll, then go and speak to the Israelites.’ In other words, assimilate this word not only with your mind but also make it flesh in your life, and then communicate it to the people. The verb ‘to eat,’ used here in the sense of assimilating, makes this word of God flesh of your own flesh. Only when I proclaim it with words and they see it embodied in my life does my proclamation become convincing. Also, the prophet Jeremiah says: ‘When I found your words, O Lord, I devoured them greedily, and your word was the joy and gladness of my heart.’ 

The verb to eat means to assimilate, especially the word of God. Jesus says: “The bread that I give is my flesh.” What does this word flesh mean so as not to misunderstand Jesus’ message about eating his flesh? In Semitic thought, flesh does not refer to muscles. This is a dangerous misunderstanding; even when talking about the resurrection of the flesh, many still think of muscles coming back together. No, the flesh in the biblical sense is not just muscles; it’s the whole person, viewed as a weak, fleeting, and above all mortal creature. That is the flesh. To say that the person is fleeting, fragile, weak, and subject to death is to say that man is flesh. This is not disrespect for the human condition. It is simply acknowledging the truth of our reality. Psalm 78 states: “Many times has the Lord appeased his wrath at the sins that have been committed by his people and did not punish them because he remembered ‘I must be patient because they are flesh, a breath that departs and does not return.'” 

Let us remember that this is the biblical meaning of ‘flesh.’ When the evangelist John writes that “the Word became flesh”—the word of God, the revelation of God, became man in Jesus of Nazareth—he does so not because of his outward appearance. Still, he became like us in every way and incorporated all our life experiences, including their frailty, limits, and precariousness, even death. 

The Word, in becoming man, took on flesh and became mortal. So what does the expression ‘to eat his flesh’ mean? It signifies accepting, absorbing, and making the wisdom of God your own, as we see it embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, a man with fragile human nature. When we look at Jesus, we see the perfect man; therefore, Jesus is not making a cannibalistic proposal, and his listeners understood this very well; the idea of cannibalism did not scandalize them. No, they understood the challenge Jesus was making. ‘You think you can fully humanize yourselves by eating the bread of the Torah’s wisdom. Now, the wisdom of God is present in this fragile flesh of man, the son of a carpenter.’ 

It’s about understanding his wisdom. We’re not yet discussing the Eucharist; he always refers to embodying his presence as presented in the Gospel message. He’s only introducing the topic, which will be clarified next Sunday: understanding him as the Eucharistic bread. I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.