4 August 2024
XVIII Sunday of Ordinary Time B
John 6:24-35
Chapter six of John's Gospel opens with an unexpected and remarkable gift: Jesus feeds the crowd with an abundance of bread, ensuring that everyone has enough. The evangelist underscores this: everyone ate until they were full, and twelve baskets of leftover bread were collected (John 6:12-13).
This principle of starting with a gift recurs throughout John's Gospel in every major scene: from the wedding at Cana to the living water offered to the Samaritan woman, from healing the man born blind to raising Lazarus. In every case, the initial action is a gift, grace given freely to all whom Jesus encounters.
In the first place is the gift of God, which forms the core of our faith.
Yet, this also presents a significant challenge in our relationship with God. This is evident in the interaction between Jesus and Philip in last Sunday's Gospel: Jesus asks Philip where bread can be bought to feed the crowd. Philip's response, rooted in conventional logic, reveals its inadequacy: to feed such a crowd, even a large sum of money would be insufficient (Jn 6:5-7).
This reflects the logic by which we habitually interpret our relationship with God: if we want something, we must acquire it, buy it, or deserve it. If we fail to get it, we assume the fault lies with us. Often our life is caged within this way of thinking. This mindset contrasts sharply with God's logic, which starts with the gift rather than our needs and wants.
Today's Gospel highlights this point: the crowd, having been satisfied, seeks Jesus again, but their search is driven by their own needs: “you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled” (Jn 6:26). Animals seek only what they need, while humans also seek something that gives fullness to life, beyond merely satisfying physical hunger.
Thus, before need comes the gift, which in turn shapes our needs. It doesn't suppress them but expands them, teaching us not to settle for merely satisfying our appetites but to enter a relationship characterized by gratuitousness and friendship.
However, when faced with this expanded horizon, the old mechanism of merit and gain reappears when Jesus invites the people to seek what offers eternal life, they immediately ask what they must do (Jn 6:27-28). At this juncture, Jesus reveals another way of living, not based on personal effort or merit, but through faith: this is the work of God. Jesus frames it significantly: we are called to fulfill God's work, which is our faith (Jn 6:29).
Believing is God's work because by believing we open our lives to God, and this enables Him to work in us what He desires, which is the fullness of our lives, the beauty of a fully real relationship with Him.
These two logics in today's Gospel are in some way symbolized by the two shores of the lake (Jn 6:25) and by the crossing that the disciples are called to make: faith is not an intellectual act, but a continuous passage between two logics, between two choices: one that begins with God's gift and one that starts from ourselves and our search; one that is based on our works and one that is founded on God's work in us; one that focuses on our small needs and one that opens up to God's desires and the greatness of His heart.
Those who listen to His Word can make this crossing and arrive at the shore where God is waiting to accomplish His work in us.
+ Pierbattista
