Last week, and for the next several weeks, we will be hearing from the Gospel of John. Last week, we heard about how Jesus miraculously fed the multitude of followers with five loaves of bread and several fish. That reading and the first reading this week serve as a gateway into a discourse on bread from heaven and Jesus as the bread of life. Today’s first reading from Exodus recounts how God sustained the Israelites escaping from bondage in Egypt only to wander through the desert short of food. God sends them manna—’bread from heaven’—and some quail to sustain them. In today’s Gospel, Jesus begins to explain what this “bread from heaven” truly means. This is often referred to as the ‘Bread of Life’ discourse. After being fed last week by the miracle of multiplication of loaves, Jesus’ followers in today’s Gospel are once again looking for Jesus to feed them. Jesus, however, seems to call them out and begins to prepare them for what they should truly be seeking: food that will feed them far beyond their physical needs. The crowd wonders if Jesus may be the new Moses as he too provided food in the desert. But Jesus quickly responds it was not Moses who gave their ancestors bread from heaven but God. Jesus is making a transitional point here. He wants them to turn their focus from physical sustenance to the bread of God “which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”. They seem to be faintly grasping what Jesus is saying and ask that He “give us this bread always.”. Jesus responds, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”. The primary point is that the bread of life that gives eternal life is Jesus Himself. It is not physical food like the manna given to Israel in the desert nor the physical bread that Jesus multiplied from five barley loaves. In the coming weeks, Jesus will reveal far more of what this ‘bread of life’ means as we continue this Bread of Life Discourse. Pray that the Holy Spirit will open our hearts and minds to these Words of Jesus as He leads us to a deeper understanding of the ‘source and summit’ of our Catholic faith: the Holy Eucharist.