Is this Not Jesus? Son of Joseph?

In this week’s Gospel, Jesus is doubling-down on his initial statement in the Bread of Life discourse that started last week.  Spectators are clearly complaining a bit when they say, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph?  Do we not know his father and mother?  Then how can he say,  ‘I have come down from heaven’?”  They all see and hear eyewitnesses’ witness about all the signs Jesus was performing, and yet they still were disbelieving.  This is a theme throughout John’s Gospel; how many of those in power refused to see what was before them.

Jesus is first doubling down on His divinity when he says, “It is written in the prophets:  They shall all be taught by God.”  This just one of the many times in the Gospels that Jesus plainly says He is God, and it plainly goes over everyone’s heads.

 

Next, he further clarifies He is the bread of life. “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.”  There is no “like.”  There is no paragraph later that clarifies a spiritual meaning for His apostles later.  He is plainly speaking, preparing us for what He will establish with the Last Supper, and His subsequent Death and Resurrection.

This is why the Eucharist was revered as early as the third century, and perhaps even earlier.  Why monks, who were transporting the Eucharist to those in remote places, Revered Him and prayed before Him in the Eucharist.  It is because Jesus IS the Living Bread.

If you are looking for more advanced reading, and an excellent resource on the Bread of Life discourse, check out this article on the Catholic Answers website.  It discusses how to refute errors in understanding John 6.  In this article, Bob Sullivan makes his well-researched rebuke of fundamentalist James White’s video denying the True Presence.