John 6:58Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

He continually repeats the same thing in order to impress it upon the souls of His hearers, since this teaching was almost the last. He also wished to confirm faith in the dogma of the resurrection and eternal life.

Therefore Christ speaks of the resurrection partly because He has spoken of eternal life. He also speaks of it to show that this life is not now, but will be after the resurrection.

From where, you ask, is this clear? From Scripture. He sends the Jews to it on every occasion, commanding them to be assured from it.

By the words "gives life to the world" (Jn 6:33), He awakens zeal in them. In this way, at least from zeal that others enjoy the gift, they might not deprive themselves of it.

He often repeats the words, "Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness," in order to persuade His hearers. If men could be fed without harvest and sowing for forty years, and their life was sustained, then much more will the Lord now strengthen our spiritual life.

He will do this by a better bread, His own Flesh, formed from the earth of the Virgin without the sowing of a man.

Everywhere He mentions life and often brings forward this name, because nothing is so pleasing to men as life.

Yet you may eat the Flesh and drink the Blood of the Master not only in mystical Communion, but also in another way.

The one who walks the path of activity eats the Flesh. For flesh is hard to digest, just as activity is full of labor.

The contemplative drinks the Blood as wine that gladdens the heart. For contemplation is not joined to labor, but is even rest from labors. It resembles drinking, since drinking is easier than food.

Great things, He says, must come from what is great. What is given through grace from above must prove God-befitting and worthy of the greatness of the divine gift.

Therefore, if you have wholly received by faith that this bread came down from heaven, then it must supply abiding life to all who desire it. It must possess the power of ceaseless immortality.

This property must serve as clear proof that this bread is from heaven, that is, from God. For, we think, it is fitting for the Eternal One to give what is eternal.

It is not fitting for Him to give the eating of temporary food, which scarcely has power for a very short time.

But if the words "I live by the Father" were spoken only to show that He is from the Father, and not the Father from Him, then this was said without violating equality.

In the words "he who eats Me will live by Me," He indicated that His equality with the Father is not like our equality with Him. Yet by these words He pointed to the mercy of the Mediator.

"This is the bread which came down from heaven," so that, having eaten it, we may receive life. For we cannot have eternal life from ourselves.

"Not as your fathers," He says, "ate manna and died. He who eats this bread will live forever." He wants their death to be understood as meaning that they did not receive eternal life.

For those who eat Christ will certainly die in a temporal way. Yet they live in eternity, because Christ is eternal life.

If the Son lives for the sake of the Father, then He lives for the sake of another and not for His own sake. But whoever lives for the sake of another cannot be life as its source.

For one who is holy by grace is not holy as the source. Therefore the Son would have spoken falsely when He said, "I am the life" (Jn 11:25), and again, "So the Son gives life to whom He wills" (Jn 5:21).

Therefore what is said must be understood of the humanity, not of the Godhead.

First, let us set before ourselves the following passage: "I live by the Father" (Jn 6:57). This is one of the arrows cast into heaven by those who interpret this passage impiously.

Everything that the Father has belongs to the Son, just as, conversely, what belongs to the Son belongs to the Father. Therefore nothing is proper to one alone, because all things are common. Their very being is common and equal in honor, although the Son’s being is from the Father. Therefore it is said, “I live because of the Father,” not as though the life and being of the Son are sustained by the Father. Rather, it means that the Son exists from the Father before time and without cause. Basil of Caesarea offers another argument, taking these words as referring to the Incarnation, not to the divinity of the Son (Against Eunomius 4; PG 29:693-96).

"This is the bread which came down from heaven," giving eternal life. "Not as your fathers ate manna and died."

Those who eat this bread do not die, "as your fathers ate manna and died." It is true that, as those who ate the manna died according to the flesh, so also those who eat this bread die according to the flesh.

Yet if they die in the hope of eternal life, they do not seem to die, but to fall asleep.

"He who eats this bread will live forever." Jesus Christ dwelt at length on the discourse about bread and life, knowing that bread is necessary and life is pleasant.

Bodily bread is necessary for bodily men, and spiritual bread for spiritual men. Bodily life is pleasant to bodily men, and spiritual life to spiritual men.

But in order for images to be true, can the lifeless be equated with the living? Can what is painted, carved, or cast be equated with what is natural?

The Son is the image of the Father, but not as such an image. He is the living image of the Living One. Being begotten of Him, He has no difference in nature.

Since He differs from Him in nothing, He possesses the power of His nature precisely because He does not differ.

He is called an image because His birth signifies that God is the Father of the Only-begotten God, and that He is the image and likeness of the invisible God.

Therefore He does not lose the one likeness of nature, because He is not deprived of the dignity of that nature.

This discourse took place in Capernaum, in the synagogue, in the presence of the Apostles and other disciples of Jesus. Now it was no longer the Pharisees and scribes, but many of His disciples who quietly, as though whispering, spoke to one another.

"What strange words! Who can listen to this?" This murmuring was not noticed by others in the synagogue, but it could not escape the all-knowing Jesus. He said to them, "Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascending where He was before?"

"The speech is pathetically abrupt and requires a supplement, which must be this: if this offends you, will you not come into still greater offense when you see the Son of Man ascending where He was before?

"This is the bread," and so forth: a brief and precise indication of the meaning of the whole preceding discourse.

Therefore the bread spoken of above is precisely the Flesh and Blood of Christ, or Christ generally as the God-man, Who offered Himself as sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

He gave Himself to man as food so that, through this, man might become a partaker of divine, blessed, and eternal life.

"Not as the fathers," and so forth: a reminder that this act of giving the Flesh and Blood of Christ to man is incomparably higher than the act to which the Jews had earlier pointed.

They had wished to see something similar from Christ (Jn 6:31). "They died": see Jn 6:49. "Will live forever": see Jn 6:50-51.

“This is the bread which came down from heaven,” the Savior concludes, showing in His mystical body, offered to men, a higher and more life-giving food than manna had been. Truly the miracle of the Eucharist, performed in the Christian world every day in every corner of the earth, is the greatest miracle. Before it, manna appears insignificant, both in its beneficence and in the breadth of the new miracle’s action.

"The living Father," living in Himself, eternally and unchangeably like Himself, is Jehovah, that is, He Who Is, the Existing One. He does not depend on time or space and is the cause of all being.

His mysterious name was revealed of old to Moses at the bush that burned and was not consumed (Ex 3:14).

"I live by the Father." This expression is rendered more clearly in Russian as "I live by the Father." The phrase διὰ τόν Πατὲρα, Per Patrem, means not "for the Father," as the Slavonic word might suggest, but inseparably from the Father.

That is the true thought. In other words, the life of the Father and the Son is one life, an indivisible life.

Yet the being of almighty God, Creator of the universe, is contemplated by man in His merciful relation to man: in the Son.