John 6:48Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

They must receive Him who destroys corruption and abolishes death. For all this truly belongs and is proper to Life by nature.

Because they appealed to the manna given to their fathers in the wilderness from heaven, they did not accept the bread truly come down from heaven, that is, Christ.

Therefore He necessarily compares the type with the truth. Thus they might see that manna is not the heavenly bread.

Rather, the heavenly bread is the One whom the experience of reality shows to be such by nature.

Your fathers and ancestors, He says, ate the manna and paid the debt of bodily nature.

Through it they obtained the support of temporary life. By it they gave the body its daily nourishment, and they scarcely managed not to die immediately.

The clearest proof that it was not the truly heavenly bread, He says, is that those who ate it by no means attained immortality through it.

Likewise, the sign that the Son is, in the proper and true sense, the bread of life is this.

Those who have once tasted of Him, and through participation have in some way been united with Him, are shown to be above even the bonds of death.

We have already said much about this: manna is taken as an image or shadow of Christ and pointed to the bread of life. Yet it was not itself this bread of life.

The Psalmist seems to confirm this when he cries out in the Spirit, "He gave them bread from heaven; man ate the bread of angels" (Ps 77:24-25).

Perhaps these words may seem to have been spoken by the Spirit-bearing one about the Israelites. In reality this is not so. Rather, the meaning of the saying concerns us.

Indeed, is it not the height of absurdity and folly to think that the holy Angels in heaven, though they have received a bodiless nature, eat coarse food?

Do they need help to sustain life, like that required by this earthly body? I think nothing prevents us from thinking that, since they are spirits, they may need such food.

Clearly, it would be spiritual and noetic food. Why then is the bread of angels said to have been given to the ancestors of the Jews, if the prophet speaks the truth when he cries this out?

It is clear that manna was typological, in the image of Christ. He embraces and sustains all things in being, nourishes the Angels, and gives life to those on earth.

Therefore the prophet calls what was indicated in shadows by the name of the truth.

By the impossibility of holy Angels eating earthly food, he draws his hearers, even against their will, away from the crude thought, that is, from manna.

He leads them up to the spiritual understanding, that is, to Christ Himself, who is the bread even of the holy Angels themselves.

Thus, those who ate manna, He says, died. Plainly, they received from it no participation in any life.

It was not truly life-giving, but only a remedy against bodily hunger. It had the significance of a type of the truth.

But those who receive into themselves the bread of life will have immortality as their reward.

Completely freed from corruption and all its evils, they will be raised to the eternal and endless continuance of life according to Christ.

These considerations of ours are not hindered by the fact that those who enter into communion with Christ must still taste death according to the debt of nature.

Although they undergo what belongs to human nature by falling under this common end, nevertheless, as Paul says, they "live to God" (Rom 6:10-14, 8; cf. Gal 2:17-21).

They do so as those who are destined to live forever.

Many at that time ate it who were pleasing to the Lord, and they did not die spiritually. Why? Because they understood the visible food spiritually. They hungered spiritually, and they ate spiritually, so as to be spiritually filled. Even today we receive visible food. But the Mystery is one thing, and the power of the Mystery is another. How many receive from the altar and die, indeed die while receiving the Gifts? Therefore the apostle says: “He eats and drinks judgment to himself” (1 Cor 11:29). For the Lord’s morsel became poison for Judas. Yet he received it, and when he received it the enemy entered into him (cf. Jn 13:27). This was not because he received something evil, but because an evil disciple received something good in an evil manner. Therefore see, brothers: eat the heavenly bread spiritually, and bring your innocence to the altar. Though sins are committed every day, let them not be sins leading to death. Before you approach the altar, consider what you will say: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Mt 6:12). Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Approach Communion in peace. It is bread, not poison. But see that it is not poison only if you forgive. For if you do not forgive, you lie, and you lie to Him whom you cannot deceive. You can lie to God, but you cannot deceive God. He knows whatever happens. He sees you within, examines you within, beholds you within, and judges you within. Either He condemns you within, or He crowns you. The fathers of those Jews are evil fathers of evil children, unbelieving fathers of unbelieving children, murmuring fathers of murmuring children. For that people is not said to have displeased the Lord by anything more than by murmuring against God. Therefore the Lord, wishing to show them that they are children of such fathers, begins His conversation with them in this way: “Why do you murmur among yourselves, murmurers, sons of murmurers?” (cf. Jn 6:43). “Your fathers ate manna and died” (Jn 6:49), not because manna was something evil, but because they ate it in an evil manner.

For the one who eats rejoices for a short time, but afterward he will go far away. The wretched man did not know that whoever withdraws from God will perish. “Forsake foolishness, and live, and walk in the way of understanding, that you may live long” (Prov 9:6 LXX). For the bread of wisdom is the fruit of life, as the Lord Himself says: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever” (Jn 6:51). Indeed, the food was pleasant, and the manna wonderful, while Israel ate it. Nevertheless Israel died, for that food was not for eternal life to the one who ate it. Indeed, that whole multitude of the people perished in the wilderness. But the Lord teaches, saying: “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and died. The bread which comes down from heaven is such that whoever eats of it will not die” (Jn 6:48-50). Meanwhile the impious and the indifferent hunger for this bread. But the holy man is wholly satisfied with it and says: “As for me, in righteousness I shall behold Thy face. When I awake, I shall be satisfied with Thy likeness” (Ps 16:15). Whoever partakes of the divine Bread will experience a continual hunger of desire. And whoever has such hunger will have boundless grace, as Wisdom promises, saying: “The Lord will not allow the soul of the righteous to hunger” (Prov 10:3). In the Psalms He likewise promised, saying: “I will abundantly bless his provision; I will satisfy his poor with bread” (Ps 131:15). Let us hear the Savior also saying to us: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Mt 5:6). Thus it is fitting that lovers of the holy life in Christ, who rouse themselves to desire His food, should pray and say: “As the hart longs for the springs of water, so my soul longs for Thee, O God” (Ps 41:2).

If your whole soul has become a spiritual eye and has wholly become light; if you have been nourished with the heavenly food of the Spirit, and given the water of life to drink; and if you have put on the garment of mystical light, then all this has been acquired by your inner man, and he is firmly assured of it. Then truly you already live eternal life. From now on your soul rests with the Lord. Truly you have acquired and received from the Lord what enables you to live the true life. But if you see none of this in yourself, then weep, be sick at heart, and lament bitterly. You have not yet become a partaker of eternal and spiritual riches. You have not yet acquired the true life.

Then the Savior, with irresistible directness and clarity, revealed to them that He is the source of eternal life sent down from heaven. “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. The bread which I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” By these words, on the one hand, He pointed to the coming great work of redeeming sinful mankind through the offering of the flesh of the Son of Man for the life of the world. On the other hand, He pre-established the Mystery of Communion, which would serve as the means by which later generations of the faithful would partake of Christ’s redeeming work.

The general sense of the verses under consideration is this. Do not murmur. Your murmuring will clarify nothing for you. The truth remains unshaken in the highest degree.

That truth is that I am the bread of life for you and for the whole world. This is such bread that the wondrous manna in the wilderness, which you recall, cannot be compared with it.

Your fathers ate that wondrous bread in the wilderness and nevertheless died. The wondrous character of that bread did not prevent their death.

But he who eats the bread of which I speak will never die, but will live forever.

"He who believes in Me," and so forth: see the note on Jn 6:40 and the parallels. "I am the bread of life": see the note on Jn 6:35.

"Your fathers ate the manna." The Jews themselves had earlier pointed to the wondrous manna, wishing to see a similar miracle from Jesus (Jn 6:31).

The Lord points to this and explains that the bread of which He speaks is more wondrous than manna and surpasses it in its action upon man.

This is shown by the fact that those who ate manna in the wilderness died, whereas the one who eats this bread will not die.

Death here means both bodily and spiritual death, but in different applications.

Those who ate manna in the wilderness all died bodily. Those also died spiritually who saw in that food only bodily food and did not abide in faith.

Those who partake of Christ's bread will die bodily, but they will be alive spiritually in communion with God through faith.

Then they will rise on the last day (Jn 6:39-40, 44) and will live forever in blessed life, in union with God.

But those who do not have such communion with God through partaking of this bread will, even after rising, remain in spiritual death.

They will remain in alienation from God, as those condemned (Jn 5:29).

"I am the living bread." The expressions "living bread" and "bread of life" differ from one another.

The first denotes life as a property of the bread itself. The latter denotes life as the effect produced by it in the one who partakes.

This effect, of course, depends on the fact that the bread itself has such a property. Therefore these expressions complete one another.

They ate manna in the wilderness and died, because manna was not living bread. The one who eats Christ's bread will not die, because this bread is living.

"And the bread is My Flesh," and so forth. Here is the essential supplement to the former discourse about bread, given by a particular explanatory feature.

The Lord suddenly resolves His enigmatic discourse by this feature, which completely astonished His hearers (Jn 6:52).

Until now, under the image of bread, He had spoken generally about His Person as the object of faith.

Now He speaks clearly, precisely, and definitively. The bread of which I speak is My Flesh.

"Here He speaks clearly of the mystical communion of His body" (Theophylact).

Flesh is the same as body, the bodily composition of the God-man. Here the word must be understood in a strictly literal sense, since there is no reason to understand it figuratively.

The word bread in this whole discourse plainly has a figurative or non-literal meaning, since it denotes here the Person of Christ in general.

By the word Flesh, a precisely determinative and concrete meaning is given to it.

The word manna, which concretely defines the general concept of the bread that once fed the Hebrews in the wilderness, plainly has a literal and direct meaning.

So too does the word Flesh, which defines the general meaning of bread.

"Note that the bread which we partake of in the mystery is not an image of the Lord's body, but is the very Flesh of the Lord.

For He did not say that the bread which I will give is an image of My flesh, but, 'is My Flesh'" (Theophylact).

"Which I will give for the life of the world." This is figurative speech about the Messiah's sacrifice on the Cross.

The Lord's Flesh was offered by Him on the Cross as a true sacrifice to God for the redemption of the sins of the whole world.

So too the typological sacrifice for sin under the law of Moses cleansed the sin of the one who offered it.

Since this sacrifice of the Cross on Golgotha was still ahead, the Lord speaks of it in the future tense: "I will give."

"For the life of the world" means so that the world may live, spiritually alive in union with God, who has been reconciled by this sacrifice.

The means for attaining this life is faith in the redemptive death of the Messiah, the God-man.

By the power of this faith the whole world would have received this life if the whole world had believed.

For Christ offered the redemptive sacrifice for all, for the whole world, and for the life of the whole world.

Until then the world had been alienated from God, and therefore in spiritual death because of sin.

For that sin, the reconciling sacrifice had not yet been offered by the Son of God.

Here one already clearly sees the Lord's reference to the paschal lamb, which His hearers were soon to eat at the approaching feast of Pascha (Jn 6:4).

In the following section (Jn 6:53 and following), this reference is still clearer and more decisive.

The Lord teaches about Himself as the true paschal lamb, who takes upon Himself the sins of the whole world.

The paschal lamb was only a type of this Lamb.

Before Pascha, the Lord was now giving His hearers to understand that the time of types is passing away and the truth itself is coming.

The eating of the paschal lamb will be replaced by the eating of Christ's body, offered in sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

How this discourse of the Lord affected His hearers is seen from what follows.

More than this, because they resisted the will of God, they experienced God’s wrath (Ps 94:10-11; Ps 77:33; 1 Cor 10:5). Such is everything utilitarianism devises for man. Is it worth troubling oneself greatly at its instruction, when all its inventions and exhausting labors do not save from death? No. That would mean thinking far too lowly of one’s soul and of oneself. It would mean condemning oneself to the lot of a working beast (Ps 89:3-6).

Of the greatest importance in the Lord’s final words is the expression that the one who tastes the bread of life will not die. This expression is set against another divine saying, pronounced by God at the creation of man, when the Lord first gave him a commandment: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17). Sin committed brought death into the world. Yet then the Lord God promised man a Deliverer in the “seed of the woman.” But only he will not die who is joined to Christ and to His most pure flesh and blood, according to His commandment, by approaching to partake of them. For by them sin is washed away and man is saved.