Something in all of us wants to go to Heaven. John 6:30-35 tells all of that great desire. “The crowd said to Jesus: “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do?”
They reminded Jesus: “Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'”
Jesus reminded them that it was God Who provides blessings. “So Jesus said to them, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Something in all of us wants to go to Heaven. Something else impels us to believe in Moses, Caesar, Lincoln, or some such person, for free food. The crowd just wanted more of the free food He had provided the five thousand from a few loaves and fishes.
Then, Jesus began to tell about what He would provide at The Last Supper. “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.'”
Between John 6:30 and John 6:66, Jesus would repeat His answer to “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?” a total of twelve times. One time for each Tribe, Jesus would repeat “If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.”
No crowd wants to hear that. They want free food! The twelfth time He repeated that, they left Him. True believers stayed with Him. Then, at The Last Supper, they received “manna in the desert” when He changed bread and wine into His Actual Body and Blood.
He ordained priests in The Only Church He Founded with the power to provide His Actual Body and Blood to the future faithful. He ordered them: “Do this in memory of Me.”
Obedient Catholics still receive “manna in the desert” at every Catholic Mass since The Last Supper.
Something in all of us wants to go to Heaven. We get there by receiving His Body, “the true bread from Heaven.” We who receive His Blood will “never thirst.” Never is a very long time!
