Denver Catholic

12 AUGUST 2023 | DENVER CATHOLIC I N - D E P TH A ll four Gospels have an account of the multiplica- tion of the loaves and fish. St. John's version of this story can be found at the beginning of the sixth chapter of his Gospel. In his telling, immediately after per- forming this miracle, Jesus f led to a mountain and then crossed the Sea of Galilee, pursued by a crowd eager to see more wonders and to make the wonder-worker into a king. They finally tracked him down in the synagogue in the lake- side town of Capernaum, and there, a remarkable dialogue ensued. In many ways, the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence f lows from and continually returns to this conver- sation. Thus, we must attend to it with particular care. When they asked Jesus how he had gotten there ahead of them, the Lord chided them: "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life" (Jn 6:26–27). Ordinary bread satisfies only physical longing, and it does so in a transient way: one eats and one must soon eat again. But the heavenly bread, Jesus implies, satisfies the deepest longing of the heart, and does so by adapting the one who eats it to eternal life. The Church Fathers loved to rumi- nate on this theme of divinization through the Eucharist, the process by which the consumption of the bread of life readies one for life in the eternal dimension. In the versions of the Lord's prayer found in the synoptic Gospels, we find the phrase ton arton ... ton epiousion, usually rendered as "daily bread." But the literal sense of the Greek is something like "supersubstantial bread," designating, not so much the bread of ordinary human consumption, but the bread suitable for a higher pitch of existence. ⊲ BY BISHOP ROBERT BARRON Founder of Word on Fire 12 THE SCANDAL OF JOHN 6

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