April 20, 2012. Tuesday Homily, April 24, 2012

John 6: 30-35.

The crowd said to Jesus: "What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat."

So Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

So they said to Jesus, "Sir, give us this bread always." Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst."

The Gospel of the Lord.

This Gospel describes the next day after Jesus had fed the 5000 in the wilderness with five barley loaves and two fish. The crowd is asking "What sign can you do?" Sign. The first part of John's Gospel is the Book of Signs; the second is the Book of Glory." In the Book 0f Signs, John describes six miracles of Jesus, water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana, the healing from a distance of the son of the royal official, the curing of the paralytic who had been paralyzed 38 years, the feeding of the multitude, the curing of the man blind from birth, the resurrection of Lazarus.

The real sign of Jesus is His words, for John's Gospel starts: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him, nothing came into being. What has come into being in him was life and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it." John 1: 1-5.

We can trace it back. Jesus says, "For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." And Jesus came down from Heaven, and Jesus "gives life to the world." So the crowd said to Jesus, "Sir, give us this bread always." Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst." What is this bread? It is the Word. And Jesus is the Word.