In today's passage, after the sharing of the loaves, the crowd chases Jesus to the other shore, towards Capernaum.
And immediately the Lord puts his finger on the sore spot by emphasising that they seek Him not because of the signs they have seen, but because they are satiated.
A quest driven not by faith, but perhaps by need.
And, to those who ask what to fulfil to do the works of God, the Lord urges the work par excellence: believing.
Jesus dismounts and shifts his gaze from law to Faith.
Wonderful context that in the time of Francis and Clare led the poor people of Assisi to evolve their path of trust and abandonment in God.
In the extraordinary Franciscan Sources we find Francis himself called by the Lord to a leap of faith.
"The Saint found great consolation in the Lord's visits and was assured by them that the foundations of his Order would always remain stable [...].
Being troubled by bad examples, and having resorted one day, so bitterly, to prayer, he felt himself addressed in this way by the Lord:
"Why are you, little man, troubled? Perhaps I made you pastor of my Order in such a way that you would forget that I remain its principal patron?
That is why I have chosen you, simple man, so that those who will, may follow the works that I will do in you and that must be imitated by all others.
I have called you: I will preserve and shepherd you, I will make up with new religious the void left by the others, to the point of giving birth to them if they were not already born.
'Do not therefore be troubled, but wait for your salvation, for if the Order should be reduced even to only three brothers, my help will always be stable'.
From that day it was customary to say that the virtue of a single holy friar overcomes a quantity, however great, of imperfects, as a single ray of light dispels the thickest darkness" (FF 742).
To him who believes in Him who makes us righteous, it is his faith that is reckoned to him for righteousness (cf. Rom 4:4-5).
S. Clare, then, lived literally what Jesus suggests in this Gospel passage: be concerned about food that lasts forever.
In fact, Pope Gregory, with the Bull "Quo elongati" [Up to what point] of 28 September 1230, forbade the Friars Minor from entering monasteries without a special licence from the Holy See - and that only those brothers deputed to do so could take care of the Poor Clares.
In this context, here is what the Sources attest:
"Once, when the Lord Pope Gregory had forbidden any monk to go to the monasteries of the Women without his permission, the pious Mother regretted that the sisters would more rarely have the food of sacred doctrine and groaning said:
"Take them all away from us now, the brothers, after you have taken away those who gave us the nourishment of life!"
And she immediately sent all the brothers back to the minister, not wanting to have beggars to provide the material bread, when they no longer had those who provided them with the bread of the spirit.
But when Pope Gregory learned of this, he immediately put the prohibition back in the power of the general minister" (FF 3232).
Solicitude of a soul in love with the eternal food and willing to renounce everything for It.
«Work not for the food that perishes, but for the food that remains for the life of the LORD [...]» (Jn 6:27).
«This is the Work of God: that you believe in him whom he has sent» (Jn 6:29).
Monday of the 3rd wk. in Easter (Jn 6:22-29)
