More thoughts on the Eucharist

John 6:44-51

Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus offers himself as food for the soul. There is a great truth revealed in the bread of life discourse: it is the law of the gift. This personal, incarnating God wants to be eaten and drunk, to be radically and fully for the other.

Why were the gods of the ancient world so popular? Because they were projections of ourselves—vain, arrogant, resentful, violent. This means that they put little moral pressure on us. They were frightening but not morally demanding.

But this God who shows that he is totally love, and who wants us to eat and drink him in, is the God who wants us to be like him. As he is food and drink for the world, so we must be food and drink for the world. As he gave himself away utterly, so we must give ourselves away fully.

We’re not to cling to the goods, honors, and values of the world—all those things that aggrandize the ego—but rather give ourselves away. That’s what we learn from the God of the gift.

Bishop Robert Barron