20th Sunday in Ordinary Time (John 6:51-58)

My Father went to boarding school during the Second World War and loves to tell stories of meat that was so rancid that it could be seen moving across the plate on its own as if it was alive. Does Jesus mean this when he speaks of the “bread of life”? I doubt it. But what does he mean? Bread, like a piece of meat, is inanimate and shouldn’t be going anywhere, but this bread is alive. Not because it’s rancid, but because it’s changed. What is it changed into? Into flesh: “the bread that I shall give is my flesh,” says Jesus.

A lady I know once worked in a counseling centre where one day a man burst in, panicking, demanding to see a counselor right away. “You’ll have to wait half an hour,” she said, while she organized someone. But while he was waiting she suggested him to go into the nearby church and sit in front of the tabernacle. When he came back a half-hour later, he was like a different man, cool and calm. Bread couldn’t have done that, couldn’t have given him peace the way sitting in front of the living bread did. The living bread was the Lord Jesus himself, communicating with the soul, bringing his peace to people who need it.