(Jn 6:24-35)

Mysticism of the Seed and the Work-Gift of Faith

(Jn 6:22-29)

The crowd must be directed, because faced with the "sign of the loaves" the reaction seems disappointing. Sensationalism that directs towards an earthly kingdom is not worthwhile (v.15).

Not a few seek Jesus not for the amazement of the Person and his Way, but because it guarantees more satiety than others (v.26).

Then one must get out of the superficiality of short thoughts. To the Master, the "correct" relationship already seems a "finished" Love.

Christ's proposal points to other goals; it does not match with momentary enthusiasm for a sensational fact, nor with quiet egoism.

In the Sign that nourishes the new Way [the Exodus of "little boats" (vv.22-24) that follow Christ] lies a Vocation and a Mission. Beyond where it is assumed.

A Mysticism of the Seed given to finally set us off without guardians (v.22) opens up the meaning of personal existence.

Otherwise the struggle for 'bread' does not reach the Source, nor the roots of being and relationship. Nor does it expand the horizon of total living.

In the desert, Moses had ensured sustenance for the people: admittedly, a meagre food, always identical to the point of boredom - but reassuring. 

Like ancient religion: good for all seasons; which is also good on the surface.

The 'Son of Man' is the person endowed with full humanity, portraying man in the divine condition.

He does not repeat the past: he is always surprisingly on the other side (v.25) to make himself that "I know not what": 'perfume' of the outgoing Church.

Eros beyond, which overcomes attachments, habit, established balances.

In short, Christ does not want passive friends, those who do not want the discomfort of listening and dialogue; who shun suffering, affronts, or the consequences of new initiatives.

The Lord does not identify spiritual well-being with the extinguishing (toxic) of the flame of the soul that does not measure itself, that does not like questioning, and comparisons.

In our journey, the very apprehension of situations that worry and manifest vulnerabilities are valuable intimate signals.

The same goes for failures, which force us to rework 'no events', look inside ourselves, shift our gaze.

Assemblies of Faith' are the Fraternities that in the unfolding of relationships, horizons and even insecurities do not leave us conditioned and 'regulated', shaped by epidermal, other people's gazes.

Equal conviviality of people who do not keep food and treasures for themselves, experiencing together a special aptitude for appreciation and wholeness - without secret, hysterical, lacerating dissociations.

The Work required is not at all about fulfilling legal requirements, the pile of 'works', or fulfilling the many requirements... to 'deserve'.

It does not resemble the usual works of setting up [the "doing": v.28], for it is rather singular Action of God [Subject] in us.

Observances must be tediously piled on top of one another. Instead, the divine Work that is accomplished in our every act is precious Virtue.

Unexpected energy; a new opportunity to meet ourselves, our brothers, another shore - and to detach ourselves from externality.

Jesus self-veils himself in the sign of the breaking of the Bread, "food that lasts for the Life of the Eternal" (v.27), that is to say, an experience that already here and now possesses the indestructible quality of God's own intimacy.

In order to receive the well-diminished Food that sustains and becomes in us the source of complete life, the "work" to be done does not belong to the kind we can do - not even according to law and devotion.

It can only be a response to the work that the Father Himself does within each of us, even if it does not immediately appear brilliant and purposeful.

And here is the reversal guaranteed by the adventure of Faith:

Religious submission is undermined by acceptance, which has a far less mortifying (or reductionist) sense; conversely, respectful of attempts, and creative.

It does not only present a kind of elitist and normalised depersonalisation: e.g. 'eyes open', pleasures not to be experienced, 'bills to be paid'; so on.

It changes the relationship with God.

It becomes one of pure 'reception'. And yet inventive, by Name: unrepeatable and personal.

No longer one of passive renunciation, rebuke, purification, obedience [lordly appearances].

The founding Eros does not scold us: he is solely Gift.

But only its work is reliable, albeit whimsical, unaligned, changeable, totally unpredictable.

And Us? Spontaneous, transparent, unbothered correspondence; not covered by tame activism.

Only then will 'giving in' not somatise into acts of protest. For a healthy Reciprocity, respectful of our character and ascendant.

In this way the attraction will not be extinguished. It wants its peaks every day; it is not enough for it to turn into a normal symbiosis, then a fad.

Rather, it dreams of a broad Path; in depth. Of regeneration and similarity - which involves and projects, but does not absorb.

The rest unfortunately remains an ineffective or ambiguous sequel; leading the soul always at war with itself and others.

Binary that here and there can only manifest blind, one-sided, forced caricatures of His Image - despite the claims of excellence.

Mechanisms that hurt.

To internalise and live the message:

How do you discern the qualitative difference between Works of Law and Works of Faith?

Mysticism of the Bread of Life

(Jn 6:30-35)

What the term "Bread" used by Jesus in this pericope alludes to is derived from the Hebrew term "Lechem", whose root [consonants "l-h-m"] evokes its "being ground" and "sifted" in the Passion of love; hence, it relates in filigree to the complete gift on the Cross.

According to a Jewish belief, the coming of the Messiah would be accompanied by a shower of Manna from heaven - called Manna of the Second Redeemer - to satisfy material appetites.

Bread that does not last.

There were also rabbinic speculations reflecting other claims, not of physical necessity; and they told of the 'bread' descended from above in a sapiential figure (Deut 8:3: "man does not live by bread alone, but by what comes from the mouth of the Lord"; cf. Wis 16:26).

To meet existential needs and the great burning questions of meaning, Jesus reveals and presents Himself as the indestructible Bread of Life.

In the messianic hopes of a golden age and liberation lurked the same expectations that lurk in the folds of our going, even further than those fulfilled by Moses.

We seek eminent food.

For there are questions that we cannot answer: why the pain and humiliation, why there are fortunate people and others who through no fault of their own live unhappily; for what great task we were born, and why despite our comforts we still do not feel fulfilled.

Our experience is as if shrouded in the confusion of underlying questions... and often even the eye and warmth of a Witness is missing.

So we look for a Person who translates everything into Relation, and we long for his Wisdom Food - a foundation, a humanising warmth, and a synthesis of all truth and all history.

Only Jesus and his story give meaning to the many happenings; even to limits, wounds, boundaries, precariousness: he is Dream, Meaning, Action and Voice of the Father. Key, Centre and Destination of each one and of humanity.

The only Nourishment for the 'hunger' and the only true Source for the 'thirst' of the woman and man subjected to trials and questions.

In Jesus' time, by widespread devotion Moses continued to be the great leader to believe and adhere to.

But according to the Lord, that of the Exodus of the 'fathers' is configured as a proposal that has no future: it does not guarantee orientation, subsistence and a joyful, solid and full life.

It does not even remain as a stump of the now. It is only an archaic seed, a particular excrescence undone in favour of the mystical and renewed Wheat that makes us proceed on the authentic Path.

The great ancient leader had stopped at the religious dimension and his requisitions. What was missing was the leap of Faith ignited by the revelation of the Father's heart, in the teaching, in the story, and in the Person of Christ.

Accepting Jesus as the authentic motive and driving force, support and nourishment that would truly take hunger out of the way, is inseparable from accepting his proposal:

"Will you unite your life to Mine?". One Body, between us and Him - burning.

In such an approach, not even heaven had been able to satiate the doubts - a paradoxically growing hunger and a parchedness that forced one to return to draw, instead of succeeding in quenching the people's thirst.

The approach of simple religiosity plagued the lives of women and men, increasingly so.

Nervous, skittish and dissatisfied people. A wedding feast devoid of festivity, due to a cold, distant, impersonal, Spirit-resistant doctrine and discipline.

The pious and outdated, old-fashioned custom - with all its labours - had not ensured, and neither does it guarantee today, the great change that sustains us on our journey and ceaselessly urges us on, kindling the heart of Friendship: access to the 'land of the free', hence of love.

The Gift from Heaven prepared and arranged another Birth, disrupting from the root the common religious relationship - light, tedious and insipid nourishment; whatever, and never thickening: 'good' for all seasons.

All this was coupled with a prospect of Happiness postponed to the afterlife, after death, and on the basis of external merits.

A swampy climate of compressed and stagnant energies, which did not make one vibrate with joy.

With Jesus, simple believing becomes Faith - no longer assent and demeaning repetition, which hurls and drags us beyond our 'centre' - but unique, unprecedented and creative action. First of all of God Himself in us; for a complete realisation: as children.No reassuring recipe emerges, because the 'second' Genesis and growth in the Spirit has character, but it does not happen once and for all.

Uniquely in this sense, the expression "I Am" (v.35) underlines the exclusivity of the "discourse of revelation".

Christ totally reinterprets, and overturns, the idea of transcendence of the divine condition in the human.

The Most High is received and assimilated with a view to germination and likeness, no longer to external imitation and obedience.

"Too much" is only the Wisdom of his Revelation, which frees from doubts because it makes them fruitful and propulsive; not at all humiliating in the same way as the ancient vacillations.

Even the wounds and uncertainties of life become a 'call' to feed on the Person of Christ. But reinterpreting it with new answers to new questions; to generate oneself again and grow in Him and of Him.

So we are in the episodes, yet out of time; in the Love that is born, new.

Our identity - better: 'imprint' - is not that of pretenders [which does not quench the soul's thirst] but that of being loved.

In this way, we no longer need to silence all normal needs.

We can experience the taste of living, instead of the condemnation of always feeling undermined.

Because of this spousal and ever-new union, the immense scope of his Person minced, ruminated and made one's own as one does with food, becomes Life itself of the Eternal (v.33).

An anointing that does not lapse, that calls together to Concelebrate.

To internalise and live the message:

Does my soul hunger for merciful offices on the body or for rebirth, for meaning, and for a pathway to freedom?