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IF ANYONE EATS THIS BREAD HE WILL LIVE FOREVER

In the Eucharist it is the body of Christ itself that, in its fullness as a source of grace, comes to us; and it is not through a more or less superficial and ephemeral contact, but through the most intimate and lasting way possible: the assimilation of a food"

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The Gospel of this Solemnity it is the conclusion of the story of the multiplication of the loaves according to John.

This "sign" of sharing, seems to be very important to Jesus, since it is the only one narrated by all four gospels; rather, Matthew and Mark even tell it twice. The narratives are similar, yet each retains some of its own characteristics. Let's see the text:

"During that time, Jesus said to the crowd: «I am the living bread, down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world ". Then the Jews began to argue bitterly among themselves: «How can this man give us his flesh to eat?». Jesus said to them,: "In truth, verily I tell you: if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will resurrect him on the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Like the Father, that has life, he sent me and I live for the Father, so also he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven; it is not like what the fathers ate and died. Whoever eats this bread will live forever" (GV 6,51-58).

Giovanni's story, in particular, it does not seem to be a model of that of the synoptics, since it was not put together with passages taken from the other Gospels; appears as an original composition based on an independent tradition that John would have collected and preserved. E, more specifically, in the Johannine narrative there is a very strong theological orientation which emerges above all in the passage proposed today in the lectionary. This passage could be considered the Eucharistic or sacramental section of the story. Even in the other five versions in the synoptic gospels there is a strong Eucharistic motif, but in John it is more explicit, because it is probably the Gospel furthest from the events narrated. It is possible that gradually the story of the multiplication of the loaves formed part of the tradition of the Christian community, its connection to the special food of God's people, l'Eucharist, was increasingly recognized. The language of the multiplication stories was colored by the Eucharistic liturgies familiar to the various communities.

Even today our communities celebrate the memory of the Body and Blood of the Lord, that is, of the donated body, delivered, of Jesus for the life of men. The words of the Lord: «I am the living bread, down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread he will live forever" (GV 6,51) they reveal first of all who Jesus is: He who reveals the Father and gives life to the world with his own life, for love. In this way the words: «eat my flesh and drink my blood» (cf.. GV 6,53-56), they refer the disciple to the spiritual operation of assimilating the life of Christ into his own existence.

And therefore they refer to faith, that is, to believe, as well as listening to the word of the Lord and acting in practice, in concretely doing the will of the Father, as Jesus himself did. The life of the Lord, his flesh and blood, as witnessed in the Gospels, it is the food that every believer is called to eat so that the life of Jesus lives concretely in him. And the Church becomes the place where the humanity of every believer is called to conform to the life of the risen Lord who continues to give himself to us. So that it is true that a single life binds the Lord and his disciple. The Church thus manifests itself as a place of the alliance between the Lord and the believer.

The evangelical page that was proclaimed it reveals to us the meaning of the Eucharistic mystery that we celebrate. But the verse – «Whoever eats me, he too will live through me" (verbatim) – may seem strangely harsh, so much so that some of Jesus' listeners did not understand him and ended up abandoning him. Perhaps this apparent harshness can be explained, first of all recovering the anthropological sense of eating:

«In the Eucharist it is the very body of Christ that, in its fullness as a source of grace, comes to us; and it is not through a more or less superficial and ephemeral contact, but through the most intimate and lasting way possible: the assimilation of a food" (Pierre-Marie Benoît, ON, The stories of the institution and their scope, Light & Vie, n° 31, 1957).

Even Saint John uses the Greek verb to indicate "eating". three, which some translate literally as "chew". That is, we have a reference to that essential activity of eating which involves the transformation of food through the destruction of solid forms to make them digestible and assimilable.. In this way we can recover the realism of John's text and make it eloquent today, without losing the theological and spiritual value of the Real Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist.

For man, eating is a primordial act which accompanies us from life in the womb until death. But the act of eating is also a reference to man's cultural activity: it involves work, food preparation, sociality, conviviality. Indeed, man eats together with others and eating is connected to a table, place of friendship creation, fraternity, alliance and society. At the table you don't just share food, but they also exchange words and conversations that nourish relationships, that is, what gives meaning to life supported by food. Eating therefore also involves the most extraordinary cultural creation: the language. Tied as it is to orality and desire, the act of eating affects the affective and emotional sphere of man. It is therefore an anthropological symbol of unique significance that captures the human being in his most intimate and hidden depths and places him in the bond with the earth, with the cosmos, with the police, society and the world. There is no more total assent for man to everything that surrounds him than the act of eating. It is the human way of saying yes.

From this material and anthropological aspect we move spontaneously to the theological and spiritual one, which we grasp in all its significance in the words of Jesus that we have heard: «Like the Father, that has life, he sent me and I live for the Father, so also he who eats me will live because of me.". The "eating of me" is placed in line with the sending of the Son by the Father. It is the outcome of the mission received from the Father and the culmination of the Trinitarian event of divine revelation and communication to man in Jesus, but also the extreme act of love reached by the obedience of the Son towards the Father. From the anthropological level of eating we thus go back to the deepest and most intimate theological level which makes us understand how the Lord is the One who gives himself as food to man. “Eating me” is then the most radical expression of the love of Christ and God for humanity. This eating is made possible by the gift that the Father, in his great love (GV 3,16), He makes the Son by sending him into the world so that men may have life in abundance (GV 10,10) and that the Son freely makes of himself, for the love of humanity (GV 10,11.18; 15,13).

What, so, it is fundamental in this eating it is recognizing the gift that is at its origin. This food, indeed, it does not come from man, but it flows from God's love for man and tends to communicate the love in which true life consists. The Eucharistic food we eat is sacrament ― Sacramento ― through which the love and life of God reach man. The Eucharistic community which in approaching the Lord's table reaches its culmination and rediscovers its source, as the Council expresses it, therefore flows from love, through the mediation of the goods of creation, the bread and wine that the Church blesses, which become the Body and Blood of the Lord.

Underlining, at last, the many connections that our evangelical passage has with the entire sixth chapter of Saint John of which it is part, we realize that we find this reality that Jesus reveals to us everywhere: He presents himself as the One who reveals the Father and then as Eucharistic food and drink. For us believers this means that "eating me", requested by Jesus, cannot be separated from "coming to Jesus" (GV 6,35-45), or from "believing in Him". The parallel between believing and eating is significant. Let us remember the important and decisive words of Jesus: «This is the will of my Father, that whoever sees the Son and believes in him has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day" (GV 6,40); “He who believes has eternal life” (GV 6,47); "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day" (GV 6,54); «Whoever eats this bread will live forever» (6,58). Thus believing in the Lord and eating his Body and drinking his Blood are inseparably united, Why: "the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world" (GV 6,33). And the life that Jesus offers us is that of the Father; for this reason coming to Jesus and listening to his Word allows believers to be generated into the new life of the children of God (GV 1,12-13). Before the multiplication of the loaves and the dense discourse that followed, Jesus had stated: «Whoever listens to my word... has eternal life» (GV 5,24). In this way, the phrase «Whoever eats me, he too will live through me" (6,57) it expresses not only the culmination of God's donation and communication to man in Christ, but it also opens us to an unexpected and completely free perspective. He, the Lord Jesus, who has "returned to the bosom of the Father" continues to show us the way of life: “For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (GV 6,33).

But eternal life promised to those who assimilate the life of Christ (cf.. GV 6,51.54.58), in reality it already begins here and now for the believer. In every Eucharist we announce, indeed, the death of the Lord, we proclaim his resurrection, waiting for Him to come.

Like Jesus we too integrate death into life making life an act of donation, an act of love in the footsteps of Jesus (cf.. GV 13,34). For this love Jesus still gives himself as food and drink to men. The life of God and the life of man meet in love, nell’agape, food that truly nourishes man and reality that constitutes the life of God; indeed: «God is love» (1GV 4,8.16). The Eucharist is the sacrament of charity, dell’agape, every time we celebrate it we hear stories of how God gives himself to men and by communicating with the Body and Blood of the Lord we too become capable of giving.

From the Hermitage, 6 June 2026

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IF ANYONE EATS OF THIS BREAD, HE WILL LIVE FOR EVER

«In the Eucharist it is the very Body of Christ that comes to us in the fullness of its power as a source of grace; and it comes not through a contact that is more or less superficial and fleeting, but through the most intimate and enduring mode possible: the assimilation of food.»

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The Gospel proclaimed on this Solemnity is the conclusion of Saint John’s account of the multiplication of the loaves. This “sign” of sharing appears to have been of particular importance to Jesus, since it is the only miracle narrated by all four Evangelists; indeed, Matthew and Mark recount it twice. The accounts are similar, yet each preserves certain distinctive characteristics. Let us consider the text:

«At that time Jesus said to the crowd: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”» (Jn 6:51-58).

John’s account, in particular, does not appear to be a reworking of the Synoptic narratives, for it has not been assembled from passages borrowed from the other Gospels. Rather, it appears as an original composition based upon an independent tradition which John gathered and preserved. More specifically, within the Johannine narrative there is a very strong theological orientation which emerges above all in the passage proposed today by the lectionary. This section may rightly be regarded as the Eucharistic or sacramental portion of the account. The other five versions found in the Synoptic Gospels also contain a strong Eucharistic motif, but in John it is expressed more explicitly, probably because this Gospel stands at a greater chronological distance from the events narrated. As the account of the multiplication of the loaves increasingly became part of the living tradition of the Christian community, its connection with the special food of God’s people — the Eucharist — came to be recognised ever more clearly. The language of the multiplication narratives gradually took on the colouring of the Eucharistic liturgies familiar to the various Christian communities.

Even today our communities celebrate the memorial of the Body and Blood of the Lord: that is, of the Body given and handed over by Jesus for the life of mankind. The Lord’s words: «I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever» (Jn 6:51), first of all reveal who Jesus is: the One who reveals the Father and gives life to the world through His own life, out of love. In this way the words «eat my flesh and drink my blood» (cf. Jn 6:53,54,56) direct the disciple towards the spiritual task of assimilating the life of Christ into his own existence.

Thus these words point us towards faith — that is, towards believing — as well as towards listening to the word of the Lord and putting it into practice by concretely doing the will of the Father, just as Jesus Himself did. The life of the Lord, His flesh and His blood, as witnessed in the Gospels, is the food upon which every believer is called to nourish himself, so that the life of Jesus may live concretely within him. The Church thus becomes the place in which the humanity of every believer is called to be conformed to the life of the Risen Lord, who continues to give Himself to us. In this way it becomes true that a single life binds together the Lord and His disciple. The Church therefore manifests herself as the place of the covenant between the Lord and the believer.

The Gospel passage proclaimed today reveals to us the meaning of the Eucharistic mystery that we celebrate. Yet the verse — «Whoever feeds on me will have life because of me» (literally) — may seem strangely harsh, so much so that some of Jesus’ listeners failed to understand it and ultimately abandoned Him. Perhaps this apparent harshness can be explained by first recovering the anthropological meaning of eating:

«In the Eucharist it is the very Body of Christ that comes to us in the fullness of its power as a source of grace; and it comes not through a contact that is more or less superficial and fleeting, but through the most intimate and enduring mode possible: the assimilation of food» (Pierre-Marie Benoît, OP, The stories of the institution and their scope, Light & Vie, no. 31, 1957).

Saint John even uses the Greek verb three to indicate “eating”, a verb that some translators render literally as “to chew”. We are thus referred to that essential human activity of eating which implies the transformation of food through the breaking down of solid forms so as to make them digestible and capable of being assimilated. In this way we may recover the realism of the Johannine text and render it eloquent for our own time without losing the theological and spiritual value of the Real Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist.

For man, eating is a primordial act that accompanies us from life in the maternal womb until death. Yet the act of eating also points towards man’s cultural activity: it implies labour, the preparation of food, social interaction and conviviality. Indeed, man eats together with others, and eating is connected with the table, a place where friendship, fraternity, covenant and society are created. Around the table not only is food shared, but words and conversations are exchanged, nourishing relationships and thus that which gives meaning to the life sustained by food. Eating therefore also implies humanity’s most extraordinary cultural creation: language itself. Bound as it is to orality and desire, the act of eating engages the affective and emotional sphere of man. It is therefore an anthropological symbol of unique richness, one that grasps the human being in his deepest and most hidden dimensions and situates him within his relationship to the earth, the cosmos, the police, society and the world. For man there exists no more total assent to all that surrounds him than the act of eating. It is the human way of saying “yes”.

From this material and anthropological dimension we pass naturally to the theological and spiritual one, which we grasp in all its richness in the words of Jesus that we have heard: «Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.» The expression “feeds on me” is placed in continuity with the sending of the Son by the Father. It is the outcome of the mission received from the Father and the culmination of the Trinitarian event of divine revelation and communication to humanity in Jesus. At the same time, it is the supreme act of love to which the Son’s obedience to the Father attains. From the anthropological dimension of eating we thus ascend to the deepest and most intimate theological dimension, which enables us to understand how the Lord is the One who gives Himself as food to mankind. “Feeding on me” thus becomes the most radical expression of Christ’s love and of God’s love for humanity. This feeding is made possible by the gift that the Father, in His great love (Jn 3:16), gives in sending the Son into the world so that men may have life in abundance (Jn 10:10), and by the gift that the Son freely makes of Himself for love of humanity (Jn 10:11,18; 15:13).

What is therefore fundamental in this feeding is recognising the gift that lies at its origin. This food does not come from man; rather, it springs from God’s love for man and tends towards the communication of that love in which true life consists. The Eucharistic nourishment that we receive is a sacrament — a Sacrament — through which the love and life of God reach mankind. The Eucharistic community, which reaches its summit in approaching the table of the Lord and there rediscovers its source, as the Council teaches, springs from love through the mediation of the goods of creation: bread and wine, which the Church blesses and which become the Body and Blood of the Lord.

Finally, by considering the many connections that our Gospel passage has with the entirety of Saint John’s sixth chapter, of which it forms a part, we realise that we encounter everywhere this reality revealed to us by Jesus: He presents Himself as the One who reveals the Father and then as Eucharistic food and drink. For us believers, this means that the “feeding on me” demanded by Jesus cannot be separated from “coming to Jesus” (Jn 6:35-45), that is, from “believing in Him”. The parallel between believing and eating is significant. Let us recall Jesus’ important and decisive words: «For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day» (Jn 6:40); «Whoever believes has eternal life» (Jn 6:47); «Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day» (Jn 6:54); «Whoever eats this bread will live forever» (Jn 6:58). Thus believing in the Lord, eating His Body and drinking His Blood are inseparably united, because: «the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world» (Jn 6:33).

And the life that Jesus offers us is the life of the Father. For this reason, coming to Jesus and listening to His word enables believers to be begotten into the new life of the children of God (Jn 1:12-13). Before the multiplication of the loaves and the profound discourse that followed it, Jesus had already declared: «Whoever hears my word … has eternal life» (Jn 5:24). In this way, the phrase «Whoever feeds on me will have life because of me» (Jn 6:57) expresses not only the culmination of God’s self-giving and self-communication to humanity in Christ, but also opens before us an unexpected and entirely gratuitous perspective. He, the Lord Jesus, who has «returned to the bosom of the Father», continues to show us the way of life: «For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world» (Jn 6:33).

Yet the eternal life promised to those who assimilate the life of Christ (cf. Jn 6:51,54,58) actually begins already here and now for the believer. In every Eucharist, indeed, we proclaim the Lord’s death, we profess His Resurrection and await His coming.

Like Jesus, we too integrate death into life by making our life an act of self-giving, an act of love in the footsteps of Jesus (cf. Jn 13:34). For this love Jesus continues to give Himself as food and drink to mankind. The life of God and the life of man meet in love, in agape, the food that truly nourishes man and the reality that constitutes the very life of God; for: «God is love» (1 Jn 4:8,16). The Eucharist is the Sacrament of charity, the Sacrament of agape. Each time we celebrate it, we hear proclaimed how God gives Himself to mankind; and by receiving the Body and Blood of the Lord we ourselves become capable of self-giving.

From the Hermitage, 6 June 2026

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______________________________

IF ANYONE EAT THIS BREAD, WILL LIVE FOREVER

«In the Eucharist it is the same Body of Christ that comes to us, in all the fullness of its condition as a source of grace; and it does not do so through a more or less superficial and ephemeral contact, but through the most intimate and lasting way possible: the assimilation of food.

.

The Gospel of this Solemnity constitutes the conclusion of the story of the multiplication of the loaves according to Saint John. This “sign” of sharing seems to be very important to Jesus, since it is the only one narrated by the four evangelists; even more, Matthew and Mark even tell it twice. The stories are similar and, however, each one retains some of its own characteristics. Let's look at the text:

«At that time, Jesus said to the crowd: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.. "Whoever eats this bread will live forever and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.". Then the Jews began to argue heatedly among themselves: "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"?”. Jesus answered them: "Actually, truly I tell you: unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day. Because my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Like the Father, what does life have, He has sent me and I live because of the Father, so also he who eats me will live for me. This is the bread that came down from heaven; not like the one your fathers ate and died. "Whoever eats this bread will live forever." (Jn 6,51-58).

John's story, in particular, does not appear to be a simple reworking of the synoptic accounts, since it has not been composed by gathering fragments taken from the other Gospels; rather it appears as an original composition based on an independent tradition that John would have collected and preserved.. Y, more specifically, In the Johannine narrative there is a very marked theological orientation that emerges especially in the passage proposed today by the lectionary.. This text can be considered the eucharistic or sacramental section of the story. Also in the other five versions present in the synoptic gospels there is a strong Eucharistic motif., but in John it appears more explicitly, probably because it is the Gospel furthest from the events narrated. It is possible that, as the story of the multiplication of the loaves became part of the tradition of the Christian community, its relationship with the special food of God's people, the Eucharist, was being recognized more and more clearly. The language of the multiplication stories was progressively permeated by the Eucharistic liturgies familiar to the different communities..

Also today our communities celebrate the memory of the Body and Blood of the Lord, that is to say, of the body given and offered by Jesus for the lives of men. The words of the Lord: «I am the living bread that came down from heaven. "Whoever eats this bread will live forever." (Jn 6,51), they reveal above all who Jesus is: He who reveals the Father and gives life to the world with his own life, for love. Thus, the words "eat my flesh and drink my blood" (cf. Jn 6,53-56), They refer the disciple to the spiritual task of assimilating the life of Christ into his own existence..

So, These words refer to faith, that is to say, to the act of believing, as well as listening to the Word of the Lord and putting it into concrete practice through the fulfillment of the Father's will., just like Jesus himself did. The life of the Lord, his flesh and blood, as witnessed to us in the Gospels, It is the food that every believer is called to nourish so that the life of Jesus lives concretely in him.. And the Church becomes the place where the humanity of each believer is called to be configured with the life of the risen Lord., that continues to give itself to us. So that it is true that one life unites the Lord and his disciple. So, The Church is manifested as the place of the alliance between the Lord and the believer.

The evangelical page that has been proclaimed reveals to us the meaning of the Eucharistic mystery that we celebrate. But the verse — "Whoever eats me, He too will live for me." (literally) — may seem strangely harsh, to the point that some of Jesus' listeners did not understand him and ended up abandoning him. Perhaps this apparent hardness can be explained by recovering, first of all, the anthropological sense of eating:

«In the Eucharist it is the same Body of Christ that comes to us, in all the fullness of its condition as a source of grace; and it does not do so through a more or less superficial and ephemeral contact, but through the most intimate and lasting way possible: the assimilation of food (Pierre-Marie Benoît, OP, The stories of the institution and their scope, Light & Vie, n.º 31, 1957).

Even Saint John uses the Greek verb to indicate the act of "eating" three, which some literally translate as "chew". We thus have a reference to that essential activity of eating that involves the transformation of food through the destruction of solid forms to make them digestible and assimilable.. Through this path we can recover the realism of the Johannine text and make it eloquent for our time., without losing the theological and spiritual value of the Real Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist.

for the man, Eating is a primordial act that accompanies one from life in the womb until death. But the act of eating also refers to the cultural activity of the human being.: involves work, food preparation, sociability and coexistence. Indeed, the man eats together with others, and the act of eating is linked to the table, place where friendship is born, the brotherhood, alliance and society. At the table not only food is shared, but also words and conversations that nourish relationships, that is to say, that which gives meaning to life sustained by food. Eating involves, therefore, also the most extraordinary cultural creation of human beings: the language. Linked as it is to orality and desire, The act of eating affects the affective and emotional sphere of the person. It is about, well, of an anthropological symbol of a unique wealth, capable of capturing the human being in its most intimate and hidden depths, placing it in relation to the earth, the cosmos, the police, society and the world. For man, there is no more total adhesion to everything around him than the act of eating.. It's the human way of saying your own yes.

From this material and anthropological aspect we spontaneously move on to the theological and spiritual aspect, that we perceive in all their richness in the words of Jesus that we have heard: "Like the Father, what does life have, He has sent me and I live because of the Father, "So also he who eats me will live for me.". The "eat me" appears in continuity with the sending of the Son by the Father. It is the result of the mission received from the Father and the culmination of the Trinitarian event of revelation and divine communication to man in Jesus., but also the supreme act of love to which the obedience of the Son towards the Father reaches. From the anthropological level of eating we thus ascend to the deepest and most intimate theological level., that allows us to understand how the Lord is the One who gives himself as food to man. "Eating me" then becomes the most radical expression of the love of Christ and God for humanity.. This eating is possible thanks to the gift that the Father, in his great love (Jn 3,16), makes the Son by sending him into the world so that men may have life in abundance (Jn 10,10), and thanks to the gift that the Son freely makes of himself, for love of humanity (Jn 10,11-18; 15,13).

The fundamental thing in this eating is, therefore, recognize the gift that is at its origin. This food does not come from man, but springs from the love of God for man and tends to the communication of that love in which true life consists. The Eucharistic food we receive is sacrament — Sacrament — through which the love and life of God reach man. The Eucharistic community that, when approaching the Lord's table, reaches its summit and rediscovers its source in it, as the Council teaches, springs from love through the mediation of the goods of creation: the bread and wine that the Church blesses and that become the Body and Blood of the Lord.

Underlining, Finally, the many connections that our evangelical passage maintains with the entire sixth chapter of Saint John, of which it is part, We notice that this reality that Jesus reveals to us reappears everywhere.: He presents himself as the One who reveals the Father and then as Eucharistic food and drink. for us, the believers, This means that the "eat me", demanded by Jesus, cannot be separated from "coming to Jesus" (Jn 6,35-45), that is to say, of "believing in Him". The parallel between believing and eating is significant. Let us remember the important and decisive words of Jesus: «This is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." (Jn 6,40); "He who believes has eternal life" (Jn 6,47); «He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." (Jn 6,54); "Whoever eats this bread will live forever" (Jn 6,58). So, believing in the Lord and eating his Body and drinking his Blood are inseparably linked, why: "the bread of God is what comes down from heaven and gives life to the world" (Jn 6,33). And the life that Jesus offers us is that of the Father; that's why, Coming to Jesus and hearing His Word enables believers to be begotten into the new life of the children of God. (Jn 1,12-13). Before the multiplication of the loaves and the dense discourse that followed, Jesus had stated: "Whoever hears my word... has eternal life" (Jn 5,24). Thus, the expression "Who eats me", He too will live for me." (Jn 6,57) expresses not only the culmination of the gift and communication of God to man in Christ, but also opens us to an unexpected and completely free perspective. That, the Lord Jesus, who has "returned to the bosom of the Father", continues to show us the path of life: "For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world" (Jn 6,33).

But eternal life promised to those who assimilate the life of Christ (cf. Jn 6,51.54.58), in reality it begins here and now for the believer. In each Eucharist we announce, indeed, the death of the Lord, we proclaim his Resurrection and await his coming.

Like Jesus, We also integrate death into life making our existence an act of surrender, an act of love in the footsteps of Jesus (cf. Jn 13,34). For this love Jesus continues to give himself as food and drink to men. The life of God and the life of man meet in love, in the agape, food that truly nourishes the human being and reality that constitutes the very life of God; why: "God is love" (1 Jn 4,8.16). The Eucharist is the sacrament of charity, from agape; Every time we celebrate it we hear the story of how God gives himself to men and, by communing with the Body and Blood of the Lord, we too become capable of giving ourselves to others.

From Ermo, 6 June 2026

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