I'm Not Being Fed: Discovering the Food That Satisfies the Soul by Cavins Jeff

Author:Cavins, Jeff [Cavins, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Ascension Press
Published: 2010-12-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

The Body that Feeds the Body

As we saw in the previous chapter, the Bible shows us that the Church is the Body of Christ and that Peter has a central role. But what exactly is the role of the Church and Peter in the ongoing feeding of the faithful? In the sixth chapter of the gospel of John, we learn how Christians are to be fed and the role of the apostles in this effort. John 6 is a powerful passage of Scripture, perhaps the most important chapter in the New Testament with respect to spiritual food for Christians.

“But I don’t feel any different after receiving the Eucharist,” you might say. If that’s the case, we need to dig deeper and look at our understanding of the Eucharist and at the beautiful explanation of the Mass and Eucharist given to us in John 6.

Go Tell (and Eat) It on the Mountain

In the next chapter we’re going to look at the Passover context of John 6 in more detail. For now it is sufficient to point out that the Passover is an essential event in the gospel of John and in the evangelist’s understanding of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. The Passover is the ancient Jewish feast of unleavened bread, celebrating and commemorating the liberation of the Hebrews from Egypt (see Ex 12). John uses a specific phrase—“the Passover . . . was at hand”—three times in his gospel, one for each year of Jesus’ ministry. And he uses it at the opening of this passage as a way of showing us how to pay attention to the context in which the events described take place: “Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand” (Jn 6:4). The actions and words that follow point us toward the meaning of Jesus’ ministry and explain how He is the Lamb of God, the one who will feed the sheep.

The four gospels, to varying degrees, make it clear that Jesus is the New Moses. He is the perfect prophet promised in Deuteronomy 18:18: “I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.” The gospel writers make this connection with Moses clear. When they depict Jesus going up the mountain and delivering the Beatitudes, the guidelines and laws of the New Covenant (see Mt 5-7), they are drawing a parallel between Him and Moses, who ascended Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, the guidelines and laws of the Old Covenant (Ex 19ff). Of course, one big difference was that Moses, a great man but not divine, received those commandments from God, while Jesus, who is both God and man, delivers the new commandments by His own power, fulfilling the will of the Father.

John 6 also shows in another way that Jesus is the New Moses. “And Jesus went up on the mountain,” we read, “and there He sat with His disciples” (v.

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