St John does not have an account of the Institution of the Blessed Eucharist at the Last Supper. Instead he devotes a long passage, from which today’s gospel is taken, to the Bread of Life. The section begins after the Multiplication of the Loaves for the crowd who have returned, as Jesus tells them, because you ate your fill. He directs their thoughts towards faith in the one whom God has sent. They look for a sign, and, being Jews, the multiplication of the loaves reminds them of the sign given by Moses, the manna in the desert. Jesus suggests that since it was God who gave the manna, God will give and has given a sign, a person, who comes down from heaven and gives life. He goes on to say he is this bread come down from heaven and that all who believe will be raised up on the last day.

This provokes hostility and the first argument. “Isn’t this Jesus son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? He didn’t come down from heaven.” Rather than withdraw what he has just said, Jesus says it more strongly. I am the bread of life . . . I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Jesus is confronted with the same problem as Moses, when the people murmured against him in the desert. Faith in him is the central issue in the passage at this stage.

“The Jews” are outraged at the suggestion of having to eat flesh. Jesus makes things even more dramatic by saying if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. There is no room for doubt: to have life one must eat and drink. The Greek word in one sentence, phagein, for ‘to eat’ becomes in the next sentence trogein, ‘to chew’. There is no shortage of realism here. Furthermore, Jewish religious practice had strong views about the blood, where life was found. Food has to be kosher. Animals have to be bled to death. Now Jesus gives a challenge to all this, not merely eating flesh but drinking blood. He is dealing primarily with faith in himself and in the Father who sent him, but the words used point to the shedding of blood in sacrifice and to the Eucharist. The use of trogein ‘to munch’ or ‘to chew’ means that there is more to this than just belief. The living Father has sent the Son to give life and he who eats will live. He then introduces the idea of his resurrection, to show that what has just told them is real but different.

John is working at two levels. He insists that Jesus reveals God, the true bread from heaven, making perfect the manna which fell from heaven in the desert. But all this is made concrete and available in the Eucharist, where life comes from the broken flesh and spilled blood of Jesus. In him the long history of sacrifice is completed and brought to perfection: originally human sacrifice, then that of animals (Abraham and Isaac), then in the words of Hosea: What I want is mercy and not sacrifice [6:6]. ‘To sacrifice’ [from Latin, meaning ‘to make sacred’] is no longer about killing, but about living and giving life to one’s sisters and brothers, the fruit of the sacrifice of the Son of Man, given up for us.

• The sentence following this passage begins: Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said: “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it? And eventually many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him, a response experienced by early Christians and by Christians in all ages. Yet Jesus made no change in what he said. How closely do I go about with him? Do I think about my life in the Eucharist?

• The Eucharist means offering Mass and receiving Holy Communion, of course. How might I improve my devotion to Jesus really present? Could I spend more time in his presence? How about my sense of reverence in church or when passing a church?

• Jesus says the Eucharist is life-giving. How good am I at communicating to those around me the sense of life received that I feel, or do I talk in terms of obligation alone?

• Would it be true to say that, while we go to Mass in public, along with others, my prayer after Holy Communion tends to be private and personal, focussed on myself, my own problem, my own shortcomings. Might there be more to it than that?

• Do you help the priest improve the quality of his homily, by prayer if not by discussion? Both preacher and hearer have to be in touch with the Holy Spirit.