Book of Deuteronomy 8,2-3.14b-16a. Moses said to the people: "Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments. He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD. "Do not forget the LORD, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery; who guided you through the vast and terrible desert with its saraph serpents and scorpions, its parched and waterless ground; who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock and fed you in the desert with manna, a food unknown to your fathers."
Psalms 147,12-13.14-15.19-20. Glorify the LORD, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion. For he has strengthened the bars of your gates; he has blessed your children within you.
He has granted peace in your borders; with the best of wheat he fills you. He sends forth his command to the earth; swiftly runs his word!
He has proclaimed his word to Jacob, his statutes and his ordinances to Israel. He has not done thus for any other nation; his ordinances he has not made known to them. Alleluia
First Letter to the Corinthians 10,16-17. Brothers and sisters: The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 6,51-58. Jesus said to the crowds: "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."
The Words of the Popes Christ is God's answer to human hunger, because his body is the bread of eternal life: take it and eat it, all of you! Jesus' invitation embraces our daily experience: to live, we need to nourish ourselves with life, taking it from plants and animals. Yet, eating something dead reminds us that we too, no matter how much we eat, will die. When we nourish ourselves with Jesus, the living and true bread, we live for Him. By offering all of Himself, the Crucified and Risen One gives Himself to us, who thus discover that we were made to nourish ourselves with God. Our hungry nature bears the mark of a need that is satisfied by the grace of the Eucharist. As St. Augustine writes, Christ is truly (…) a bread that nourishes and does not fail; a bread that can be eaten but cannot be exhausted. The Eucharist, in fact, is the true, real, and substantial presence of the Savior, who transforms the bread into Himself, to transform us into Him. Living and life-giving, Corpus Christi makes us, that is, the Church herself, the body of the Lord. (Leo XIV - Homily at the Holy Mass on the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, June 22, 2025)
Today, in Italy and many other countries, we celebrate Corpus Christi, the solemn feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord, the Eucharist. It is an enduring tradition, on this day, to hold solemn processions with the Blessed Sacrament through the streets and squares. In Rome, this procession already took place at the diocesan level last Thursday, the very day of this feast, which each year renews in Christians the joy and gratitude for the Eucharistic presence of Jesus among us. The
feast of Corpus Christi is a great act of public worship of the Eucharist, the Sacrament in which the Lord remains present even beyond the time of celebration, to be always with us, throughout the passing of the hours and days. Saint Justin, who left us one of the oldest testimonies on the Eucharistic liturgy, states that, after the distribution of communion to those present, the consecrated bread was also brought by deacons to those who were absent (see Apology, 1, 65). Therefore, in churches, the most sacred place is precisely where the Eucharist is kept. In this regard, I cannot help but think with emotion of the many churches severely damaged by the recent earthquake in Emilia Romagna, and of the fact that even the Eucharistic Body of Christ, in the tabernacle, remained in some cases under the rubble. I pray with affection for the communities who, with their priests, must gather for Holy Mass outdoors or in large tents; I thank them for their witness and for all they are doing for the entire population. This situation further highlights the importance of being united in the name of the Lord, and the strength that comes from the Eucharistic Bread, also called "pilgrims' bread." From the sharing of this Bread, the capacity to share life and goods, to bear one another's burdens, to be hospitable and welcoming, is born and renewed.
The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord also reminds us of the value of Eucharistic adoration. The Servant of God Paul VI recalled that the Catholic Church professes the cult of the Eucharist "not only during Mass, but also outside of its celebration, preserving the consecrated hosts with the greatest diligence, presenting them for the solemn veneration of the Christian faithful, and carrying them in procession to the joy of the Christian crowd" (Mysterium Fidei, 57). The prayer of adoration can be performed either personally, pausing in recollection before the tabernacle, or in community, even with psalms and songs, but always favoring silence, in which to listen interiorly to the Lord alive and present in the Sacrament. The Virgin Mary is also the teacher of this prayer, for no one more or better than she has been able to contemplate Jesus with the gaze of faith and welcome into her heart the intimate resonances of his human and divine presence. Through her intercession, may an authentic and profound faith in the Eucharistic Mystery spread and grow in every ecclesial community. (Benedict XVI, 10 June 2012)
"Remember all the way the Lord your God has made you go" ( Deut. 8:2). Today's Scripture readings begin with this command from Moses: Remember! Shortly thereafter Moses reiterates, "Do not forget the Lord your God" (v.14). Scripture has been given to us to overcome our forgetfulness of God. How important it is to remember this when we pray! As one of the Psalms teaches, "I will remember the works of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old" (77:11). But also all those wonders, which the Lord has worked in our own lives.
It is essential to remember the good we have received. If we do not remember it, we become strangers to ourselves, "bystanders" of existence. Without memory, we uproot ourselves from the earth that nourishes us and are carried away like leaves in the wind. If we remember, however, we bind ourselves again to the strongest of bonds; we feel part of a living history, living experience of a people. Memory is not something private; it is the path that unites us to God and to others. That is why in the Bible the memory of the Lord is to be transmitted from generation to generation. Fathers are commanded to tell the story to their children, as we read in a beautiful passage. "When your son asks you in the time to come, 'What is the meaning of the decrees, statutes and ordinances that the Lord our God has prescribed for you?',Deut. 6:20-22). You will pass on this memory to your son.
But there is a problem: What if the chain of transmission of memories is broken? And how can we remember what we have only heard, if we have not also experienced it? God knows how difficult it is, He knows how weak our memory is, and He did something extraordinary: He left us a memorial . He did not leave us only words, because it is easy to forget what we hear. He did not leave us only scriptures, because it is easy to forget what we read. He did not leave us only signs, because we can forget even what we see. He has given us Food, because it is not easy to forget something we have actually tasted. He left us the Bread in which He is truly present, alive and true, with all the flavor of His love. In receiving Him we can say, "He is the Lord; He remembers me! That is why Jesus told us, "Do this in memory of me" (1 Cor. 11:24). Do! The Eucharist is not simply an act of remembrance; it is a fact : the Lord's Passover is made present once again for us. In the Mass we are presented with Jesus' death and resurrection. Do this in memory of me : come together and celebrate the Eucharist as a community, as a people, as a family, to remember me. We cannot do without the Eucharist, because it is God's memorial. And it heals our wounded memory. ( FRANCIS June 14, 2020)
---->--The Eucharist first heals our orphaned memory . We live in a time of great orphanhood. The Eucharist heals the orphaned memory. So many people have memories marked by lack of affection and bitter disappointments caused by those who should have given them love and instead orphaned their hearts. We would like to go back and change the past, but we cannot. God, however, can heal these wounds by placing in our memory a greater love: his own love. The Eucharist brings us the Father's faithful love, which heals our sense of being orphans. It gives us the love of Jesus, who transformed a tomb from an end to a beginning, and likewise can transform our lives. It fills our hearts with the consoling love of the Holy Spirit, who never leaves us alone and always heals our wounds.
Through the Eucharist, the Lord also heals our negative memory, that negativity that so often creeps into our hearts. The Lord heals this negative memory, which drags to the surface the things that have gone wrong and leaves us with the sad conviction that we are useless, that we only make mistakes, that we ourselves are a mistake. Jesus comes to tell us that this is not so. He wants to be close to us. Every time we receive him, he reminds us that we are precious, that we are guests he has invited to his banquet, friends he wants to dine with. And not just because he is generous, but because he is truly in love with us. He sees and loves the beauty and goodness that we are. The Lord knows that evil and sins do not define us; they are diseases, infections. And he comes to heal them with the Eucharist, which contains antibodies to our negative memory. With Jesus, we can become immune to sadness . We will always remember our failures, troubles, problems at home and at work, our unfulfilled dreams. But their weight will not crush us because Jesus is present even more deeply, encouraging us with His love. This is the power of the Eucharist, which transforms us into bearers of God , bearers of joy, not negativity. We who go to Mass can ask ourselves: what do we bring to the world? Our sorrows, our bitterness, or the joy of the Lord? Do we take Communion and then go on complaining, criticizing and feeling sorry for ourselves? But this does not improve anything, while the joy of the Lord changes lives. Finally, the Eucharist heals our closed memory. The wounds we keep inside not only create problems for us, but also for others. They make us fearful and suspicious: closed at first, cynical and indifferent in the long run. They lead us to react toward others with detachment and arrogance, deluding ourselves that in this way we can control situations. But this is a deception: only love heals the root of fear and liberates from the closures that imprison. So does Jesus, coming to meet us with gentleness, in the disarming fragility of the Host; so does Jesus, Bread broken to break the shells of our selfishness; so does Jesus, who gives Himself to tell us that only by opening ourselves do we free ourselves from inner blockages, from the paralysis of the heart. The Lord, offering himself to us as simple as bread, also invites us not to waste life chasing a thousand useless things that create addictions and leave emptiness inside. The Eucharist extinguishes in us the hunger for things and kindles the desire to serve. It lifts us up from our comfortable sedentariness, reminds us that we are not just mouths to feed, but we are also His hands to feed our neighbor. It is urgent now that we take care of those who are hungry for food and dignity, those who are not working and struggling to get by. And to do so in a concrete way, as concrete is the Bread Jesus gives us. We need real closeness, we need real chains of solidarity. Jesus in the Eucharist makes himself close to us: let us not leave those close to us alone!( FRANCIS June 14, 2020)
H.U Balthasar - Thoughts - Incomprehensible sign hoisted in the middle of the world between heaven and earth! The divine sea hunted by force in the tiny source of a man's heart, the immense oak of the Divinity in the fragile little pot of an earthly heart. God, Most High, on His throne of Glory, and the Servant, kneeling in the dust that he works and worships, One and the Other no longer distinguishable... Royal consciousness of the Eternal God compressed in the unconsciousness of human humility. All the treasures of God's Wisdom and Science piled up in the narrow chamber of human poverty... Light and constant pale red vapor spreads over the white angelic fields, and the inaccessible love of the Father and the Son takes on the color of tenderness and cordiality. All the many mysteries of God, which until now hid their faces under six wings, are discovered and smile in the direction of men down there.
FAUSTI - Bread recalls the Word of God, the beginning of life. The true bread is Jesus, the Word become flesh. Manna is the food of the exodus. "Your fathers" ate of it, but did not reach the promised land (Ps 95:8); they failed on the way and did not obtain eternal life, because they did not listen to the Lord. Manna came from heaven, but only in the past; moreover, whoever ate it did not obtain life. The bread of which Jesus speaks instead "descends" now from heaven, to the present, and whoever eats it,does not die - Bread recalls the Word of God, the beginning of life. The true bread is Jesus, the Word become flesh. We pass from bread, which recalls the gift of manna, to flesh, which recalls the sacrifice of the Lamb. These are allusions to the exodus and to the Easter. The bread that Jesus will give, when His hour has come, is His flesh: His body given for us. It is a foreboding of the Passion and its fruit. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, becoming, in His sacrifice, the source of life and blessing for all. The flesh of Jesus, His humanity offered on the cross as a total gift of love, is the epiphany of that God that no one has ever seen. In Him the Word has become flesh so that the flesh itself becomes the Word, the narration of God, the presence of His Spirit that animates the world. Every other food and drink is a "sign". symbol or metaphor of the flesh and blood of the Son, the "reality" that gives us Life and is our Life. For the people who walked in the desert, manna was the food that guaranteed physical life, the law was the food that guaranteed eternal life. Now Jesus proposes Himself as true food and true drink, fulfillment of the life that has in creation its beginning, in exodus its redemption and in communion with God its aim.
Book of Deuteronomy 8,2-3.14b-16a.
RispondiEliminaMoses said to the people:
"Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments.
He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.
"Do not forget the LORD, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery;
who guided you through the vast and terrible desert with its saraph serpents and scorpions, its parched and waterless ground; who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock
and fed you in the desert with manna, a food unknown to your fathers."
Psalms 147,12-13.14-15.19-20.
Glorify the LORD, O Jerusalem;
praise your God, O Zion.
For he has strengthened the bars of your gates;
he has blessed your children within you.
He has granted peace in your borders;
with the best of wheat he fills you.
He sends forth his command to the earth;
swiftly runs his word!
He has proclaimed his word to Jacob,
his statutes and his ordinances to Israel.
He has not done thus for any other nation;
his ordinances he has not made known to them. Alleluia
First Letter to the Corinthians
10,16-17.
Brothers and sisters:
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ
according to Saint John 6,51-58.
Jesus said to the crowds:
"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."
The Words of the Popes
EliminaChrist is God's answer to human hunger, because his body is the bread of eternal life: take it and eat it, all of you! Jesus' invitation embraces our daily experience: to live, we need to nourish ourselves with life, taking it from plants and animals. Yet, eating something dead reminds us that we too, no matter how much we eat, will die. When we nourish ourselves with Jesus, the living and true bread, we live for Him. By offering all of Himself, the Crucified and Risen One gives Himself to us, who thus discover that we were made to nourish ourselves with God. Our hungry nature bears the mark of a need that is satisfied by the grace of the Eucharist. As St. Augustine writes, Christ is truly (…) a bread that nourishes and does not fail; a bread that can be eaten but cannot be exhausted. The Eucharist, in fact, is the true, real, and substantial presence of the Savior, who transforms the bread into Himself, to transform us into Him. Living and life-giving, Corpus Christi makes us, that is, the Church herself, the body of the Lord.
(Leo XIV - Homily at the Holy Mass on the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, June 22, 2025)
Today, in Italy and many other countries, we celebrate Corpus Christi, the solemn feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord, the Eucharist. It is an enduring tradition, on this day, to hold solemn processions with the Blessed Sacrament through the streets and squares. In Rome, this procession already took place at the diocesan level last Thursday, the very day of this feast, which each year renews in Christians the joy and gratitude for the Eucharistic presence of Jesus among us. The
Eliminafeast of Corpus Christi is a great act of public worship of the Eucharist, the Sacrament in which the Lord remains present even beyond the time of celebration, to be always with us, throughout the passing of the hours and days. Saint Justin, who left us one of the oldest testimonies on the Eucharistic liturgy, states that, after the distribution of communion to those present, the consecrated bread was also brought by deacons to those who were absent (see Apology, 1, 65). Therefore, in churches, the most sacred place is precisely where the Eucharist is kept. In this regard, I cannot help but think with emotion of the many churches severely damaged by the recent earthquake in Emilia Romagna, and of the fact that even the Eucharistic Body of Christ, in the tabernacle, remained in some cases under the rubble. I pray with affection for the communities who, with their priests, must gather for Holy Mass outdoors or in large tents; I thank them for their witness and for all they are doing for the entire population. This situation further highlights the importance of being united in the name of the Lord, and the strength that comes from the Eucharistic Bread, also called "pilgrims' bread." From the sharing of this Bread, the capacity to share life and goods, to bear one another's burdens, to be hospitable and welcoming, is born and renewed.
The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord also reminds us of the value of Eucharistic adoration. The Servant of God Paul VI recalled that the Catholic Church professes the cult of the Eucharist "not only during Mass, but also outside of its celebration, preserving the consecrated hosts with the greatest diligence, presenting them for the solemn veneration of the Christian faithful, and carrying them in procession to the joy of the Christian crowd" (Mysterium Fidei, 57). The prayer of adoration can be performed either personally, pausing in recollection before the tabernacle, or in community, even with psalms and songs, but always favoring silence, in which to listen interiorly to the Lord alive and present in the Sacrament. The Virgin Mary is also the teacher of this prayer, for no one more or better than she has been able to contemplate Jesus with the gaze of faith and welcome into her heart the intimate resonances of his human and divine presence. Through her intercession, may an authentic and profound faith in the Eucharistic Mystery spread and grow in every ecclesial community.
(Benedict XVI, 10 June 2012)
"Remember all the way the Lord your God has made you go" ( Deut. 8:2). Today's Scripture readings begin with this command from Moses: Remember! Shortly thereafter Moses reiterates, "Do not forget the Lord your God" (v.14). Scripture has been given to us to overcome our forgetfulness of God. How important it is to remember this when we pray! As one of the Psalms teaches, "I will remember the works of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old" (77:11). But also all those wonders, which the Lord has worked in our own lives.
RispondiEliminaIt is essential to remember the good we have received. If we do not remember it, we become strangers to ourselves, "bystanders" of existence. Without memory, we uproot ourselves from the earth that nourishes us and are carried away like leaves in the wind. If we remember, however, we bind ourselves again to the strongest of bonds; we feel part of a living history, living experience of a people. Memory is not something private; it is the path that unites us to God and to others. That is why in the Bible the memory of the Lord is to be transmitted from generation to generation. Fathers are commanded to tell the story to their children, as we read in a beautiful passage. "When your son asks you in the time to come, 'What is the meaning of the decrees, statutes and ordinances that the Lord our God has prescribed for you?',Deut. 6:20-22). You will pass on this memory to your son.
But there is a problem: What if the chain of transmission of memories is broken? And how can we remember what we have only heard, if we have not also experienced it? God knows how difficult it is, He knows how weak our memory is, and He did something extraordinary: He left us a memorial . He did not leave us only words, because it is easy to forget what we hear. He did not leave us only scriptures, because it is easy to forget what we read. He did not leave us only signs, because we can forget even what we see. He has given us Food, because it is not easy to forget something we have actually tasted. He left us the Bread in which He is truly present, alive and true, with all the flavor of His love. In receiving Him we can say, "He is the Lord; He remembers me! That is why Jesus told us, "Do this in memory of me" (1 Cor. 11:24). Do! The Eucharist is not simply an act of remembrance; it is a fact : the Lord's Passover is made present once again for us. In the Mass we are presented with Jesus' death and resurrection. Do this in memory of me : come together and celebrate the Eucharist as a community, as a people, as a family, to remember me. We cannot do without the Eucharist, because it is God's memorial. And it heals our wounded memory.
( FRANCIS June 14, 2020)
---->--The Eucharist first heals our orphaned memory . We live in a time of great orphanhood. The Eucharist heals the orphaned memory. So many people have memories marked by lack of affection and bitter disappointments caused by those who should have given them love and instead orphaned their hearts. We would like to go back and change the past, but we cannot. God, however, can heal these wounds by placing in our memory a greater love: his own love. The Eucharist brings us the Father's faithful love, which heals our sense of being orphans. It gives us the love of Jesus, who transformed a tomb from an end to a beginning, and likewise can transform our lives. It fills our hearts with the consoling love of the Holy Spirit, who never leaves us alone and always heals our wounds.
EliminaThrough the Eucharist, the Lord also heals our negative memory, that negativity that so often creeps into our hearts. The Lord heals this negative memory, which drags to the surface the things that have gone wrong and leaves us with the sad conviction that we are useless, that we only make mistakes, that we ourselves are a mistake. Jesus comes to tell us that this is not so. He wants to be close to us. Every time we receive him, he reminds us that we are precious, that we are guests he has invited to his banquet, friends he wants to dine with. And not just because he is generous, but because he is truly in love with us. He sees and loves the beauty and goodness that we are. The Lord knows that evil and sins do not define us; they are diseases, infections. And he comes to heal them with the Eucharist, which contains antibodies to our negative memory. With Jesus, we can become immune to sadness . We will always remember our failures, troubles, problems at home and at work, our unfulfilled dreams. But their weight will not crush us because Jesus is present even more deeply, encouraging us with His love. This is the power of the Eucharist, which transforms us into bearers of God , bearers of joy, not negativity. We who go to Mass can ask ourselves: what do we bring to the world?
Our sorrows, our bitterness, or the joy of the Lord? Do we take Communion and then go on complaining, criticizing and feeling sorry for ourselves? But this does not improve anything, while the joy of the Lord changes lives.
Finally, the Eucharist heals our closed memory. The wounds we keep inside not only create problems for us, but also for others. They make us fearful and suspicious: closed at first, cynical and indifferent in the long run. They lead us to react toward others with detachment and arrogance, deluding ourselves that in this way we can control situations. But this is a deception: only love heals the root of fear and liberates from the closures that imprison. So does Jesus, coming to meet us with gentleness, in the disarming fragility of the Host; so does Jesus, Bread broken to break the shells of our selfishness; so does Jesus, who gives Himself to tell us that only by opening ourselves do we free ourselves from inner blockages, from the paralysis of the heart. The Lord, offering himself to us as simple as bread, also invites us not to waste life chasing a thousand useless things that create addictions and leave emptiness inside. The Eucharist extinguishes in us the hunger for things and kindles the desire to serve. It lifts us up from our comfortable sedentariness, reminds us that we are not just mouths to feed, but we are also His hands to feed our neighbor. It is urgent now that we take care of those who are hungry for food and dignity, those who are not working and struggling to get by. And to do so in a concrete way, as concrete is the Bread Jesus gives us. We need real closeness, we need real chains of solidarity. Jesus in the Eucharist makes himself close to us: let us not leave those close to us alone!( FRANCIS June 14, 2020)
H.U Balthasar - Thoughts - Incomprehensible sign hoisted in the middle of the world between heaven and earth!
RispondiEliminaThe divine sea hunted by force in the tiny source of a man's heart, the immense oak of the Divinity in the fragile little pot of an earthly heart.
God, Most High, on His throne of Glory, and the Servant, kneeling in the dust that he works and worships, One and the Other no longer distinguishable...
Royal consciousness of the Eternal God compressed in the unconsciousness of human humility.
All the treasures of God's Wisdom and Science piled up in the narrow chamber of human poverty...
Light and constant pale red vapor spreads over the white angelic fields, and the inaccessible love of the Father and the Son takes on the color of tenderness and cordiality.
All the many mysteries of God, which until now hid their faces under six wings, are discovered and smile in the direction of men down there.
FAUSTI - Bread recalls the Word of God, the beginning of life.
RispondiEliminaThe true bread is Jesus, the Word become flesh.
Manna is the food of the exodus. "Your fathers" ate of it, but did not reach the promised land (Ps 95:8); they failed on the way and did not obtain eternal life, because they did not listen to the Lord. Manna came from heaven, but only in the past; moreover, whoever ate it did not obtain life.
The bread of which Jesus speaks instead "descends" now from heaven, to the present, and whoever eats it,does not die -
Bread recalls the Word of God, the beginning of life.
The true bread is Jesus, the Word become flesh.
We pass from bread, which recalls the gift of manna, to flesh, which recalls the sacrifice of the Lamb. These are allusions to the exodus and to the Easter.
The bread that Jesus will give, when His hour has come, is His flesh: His body given for us. It is a foreboding of the Passion and its fruit.
Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, becoming, in His sacrifice, the source of life and blessing for all.
The flesh of Jesus, His humanity offered on the cross as a total gift of love, is
the epiphany of that God that no one has ever seen.
In Him the Word has become flesh so that the flesh itself becomes the Word, the narration of God, the presence of His Spirit that animates the world. Every other food and drink is a "sign". symbol or metaphor of the flesh and blood of the Son, the "reality" that gives us Life and is our Life.
For the people who walked in the desert, manna was the food that guaranteed physical life, the law was the food that guaranteed eternal life.
Now Jesus proposes Himself as true food and true drink, fulfillment of the life that has in creation its beginning, in exodus its redemption and in communion with God its aim.