The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: S. John
Ver. 29. — Jesus answered , &c. Believe, i.e., in Myself, who by so many arguments and miracles have proved that I am the Messiah sent by God. For the sake of modesty He speaks in the third person. As though He said, “ That work by which ye will obtain Food from God to nourish the soul unto everlasting life, is to believe in Me. For I bestow this Food upon those who believe in Me : for I Myself am this Food.” This He says (verse 35).
That ye may believe, and believing, may obey Me, and observe My law and doctrine, and fulfil it indeed. Under the term faith, as a root, Christ and Paul understand all the works of charity, penance, temperance, and all other virtues which faith stirs up and generates. Wherefore Theophylact says, “ Faith assuredly is a holy and perfect work, and satisfies those who possess it. For diligent faith leads to every good work, and good works preserve faith. For works are dead without faith, and faith is dead without works.”
Ver. 30. — They said , &c., i.e., those of the crowd who were bolder than the rest, who knew and thought less of Jesus. For they had seen the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves the day before, whereby Christ had fed five thousand men, but upon this they set small value, and ask for one still greater and more wonderful. As though they had said, “ Thou, O Jesus, askest of us a great, nay a stupendous thing, namely that we should believe in Thee as the Messiah and the Son of God. But for this the miracle of the loaves which Thou wroughtest yesterday, does not suffice. For Moses did a similar, yea, a greater work. Show us therefore a heavenly and Divine and worthy sign, by which God may attest that Thou art His Son, and our Messiah.” Therefore they add by way of explanation,
Ver. 31. — Our fathers ... as it is written (Ps. lxxviii. 24). As though they said, “ Moses fed our fathers in the desert, even more than six hundred thousand men, with heavenly and most sweet food, even the manna, and that daily for forty years, which was a greater thing than Thy multiplication of the loaves yesterday : and yet Moses did not wish to be accounted, or believed to be Messiah, and the Son of God? Since then you, Jesus, desire to be so accounted of, it is necessary that you should work greater miracles than Moses.” So SS. Augustine and Cyril. The latter adds, “ Such was the sign they asked of Christ, and thinking it a small matter that they had been miraculously fed for one day, they ask for food for a long period without labour. On such terms they seem to promise that they will assent to His doctrine.” As though they said, “ Feed us all our lives, as Thou didst feed us yesterday, and as Moses fed our fathers for forty years. Then we will believe Thee when Thou declarest that Thou art Messiah, the Son of God.” So reasoned the Jews, as being animal and carnal, when they ought rather to have reasoned according to the spirit, thus, “This Jesus has multiplied bread, He heals whatsoever sick persons He pleases, He casts out devils, He raises the dead, and does many other miracles which Moses did not do. And He does them with this very end and object, that He may by them prove that He is the Messiah sent by God : therefore He must be truly the Messiah.” When Moses gave the manna, and showed other signs, he did not do them in order that he might prove that he was the Messiah, but only a leader of the people, and a lawgiver sent by God. Wherefore the people believed in him, and so accounted of him. “Do you therefore in like manner,” saith Jesus ; “believe in Me, and account Me to be such a one as I prove by My miracles that I am, even the Messiah.”
Bread from heaven, i.e., heavenly, in heaven, or in the air, formed , and raining down, or rather snowing and hailing from thence into the camp of the Hebrews. For the manna came down like small hailstones from the sky. The Hebrew of Ps. lxxviii. 24 is degan scamaim, corn, or wheat of heaven.
Ver. 32. — Jesus said therefore , &c. Christ here refutes the cavilling of the Jews, and shows that He is greater than Moses, and gives better bread than Moses gave in giving manna. He opposes therefore, and prefers His own bread, Himself in His Body in the Eucharist, as He Himself unfolds (Vers. 35, 51, 54, &c), to the Mosaic manna, and this in three ways. (1.) The first is, because Moses, who was a mere man, gave the manna, and that only to Israel, to the Jews in the desert : but it is God the Father who gives this bread, and that to the whole world.
(2.) Because the manna was not really bread from heaven, but only from the atmosphere, coming down like dew, or hail. For it is only the bread of heaven by a figure of speech, as we say the birds of heaven , because they fly in the heaven, that is, in the air. But His bread, He said, really came down from the highest heaven, even from the Bosom of God the Father. Therefore It alone was truly heavenly and Divine, of which, in truth, the manna was only a type and shadow. So S. Chrysostom, &c.
(3.) The third way is consequent upon this — that the manna only fed the body for a time : but the Bread of Christ feeds and quickens both body and soul for ever. So SS. Chrysostom and Cyril. For though it be that Christ and the Eucharist do not remove temporal death from Christians who communicate devoutly, yet it is the cause that they will rise again from death, and after that die no more for ever. For the Resurrection is an effect of the Eucharist, as will appear from verse 50.
(4.) Cyril (lib. 3, c. 33) adds a fourth way : that Moses neither formed, nor gave the manna, but God gave it by angels at Moses’ prayer : but Christ Himself forms, and verily gives this bread of the Eucharist. For He Himself by His own omnipotence, which, together with the Divine Essence, He has received from the Father, transubstantiates, transelements, and transforms bread and wine into His Body and Blood.
The true Bread from heaven : that is, truly heavenly and Divine, not only as regards locality, in that It descends from heaven, but also as regards Its nature and substance. For this Bread is Christ Himself, Who, because He is God, has a heavenly and Divine essence, yea, the same Deity as the Father. 2. The word “true” is said because of the manna, say Cyril, Chrysostom, and Augustine ; for the manna was only a type of the Eucharist. In the Eucharist is reality (veritas), in the manna, the shadow of the reality. 3. True, in the sense of life-giving, because It gives life to the soul as well as the body, as Christ saith in the following verse. 4. True, i.e., perfect , excellent , in which there is all fulness, both of existence and nourishment. For all created existences, such as the manna, if they be compared with the uncreated Essence, or the Deity, such as Christ in the Eucharist, cannot be accounted of as realities, but only shadows. In God and Christ alone is there reality (veritas), i.e. solidity and plenitude of Being, and of feeding perfectly, like (true) Bread. This is what God spake to Moses, “ I Am I who Am : thus shalt thou say to the sons of Israel, He who is hath sent me ”
Ver. 33. — For the Bread of God, &c. Christ proves that not the manna, but His own Bread, He Himself, is true Bread, i.e., truly heavenly and Divine, by two arguments. 1. Because He alone really came down from heaven. 2. Because He alone gives true life to the world, i.e., the blessed and eternal life, which only is true life. Observe : this Bread is called the Bread of God, because formed by God alone, and the property of God alone. Because God lives by Himself and His own Divinity : and because this Bread is truly the Son of God, and God Himself.
Cometh down : not in the past, but the present tense. The Greek is καταβαίνων, the present participle. The expression therefore signifies the perpetual descent of Christ upon the Eucharistic altar even to the end of the world. For whensoever the priest consecrates the Eucharist, Christ, who after His death ascended into heaven, comes down from thence to the consecrated species of bread, and in them declares His presence (Se presentem sistit et exhibet).
Gives: verily Christ is the infinite gift, who is Life Itself, who quickens all the faithful who communicate rightly throughout the whole world, and who gives them the heavenly and Divine life of grace here, and hereafter the life of glory to all eternity.
Ver. 34. — They said therefore, &c. “Without labour, in pleasant ease let us eat joyfully this Bread, that It may prolong our life, like the tree of life in Paradise, that we may reach the years of Methuselah .” For the carnal Jews did not yet understand that the Bread of Christ was spiritual, and thought only of earthly things. “As yet,” says S. Chrysostom, “ they were looking for something material, as yet they were expecting the satisfying of their appetite.” As S. Augustine says, “Give us bread which may refresh, and never fail.” For as Cyril says, “ Although by many words the Saviour drew them away from the carnal sense, they profited nothing, nor at all drew back from carnality, for when they heard of the Bread which is given for the life of the world, they understood it of earthly bread. They were like that Samaritan woman, who, when she had heard a long discourse of Christ concerning the spiritual water, sank down to the remembrance of earthly streams, saying, Lord, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.”