(Jn 6:22-29)

The crowd must be directed, because in the face of the "sign of the loaves" the reaction seems disappointing. Sensationalism that directs towards an earthly kingdom is not worthwhile (v.15).

Not a few seek Jesus not for the wonder of the Person and his Way, but because he guarantees more satiety than others (v.26).

Then one must get out of the superficiality of short thoughts. To the Master, the "correct" relationship already seems a "finished" love.

Christ's proposal points to other destinations; it does not go together with momentary enthusiasm for a sensational event, nor with quiet selfishness.

In the Sign that nourishes the new Way [the Exodus of "little boats" (vv.22-24) that follow the Christ] lies a Vocation and a Mission. Beyond where one assumes.

A Mysticism of the Seed given to finally set us off without guardians (v.22) opens up the meaning of personal existence.

Otherwise, the struggle for 'bread' does not reach the Source, nor the roots of being and relationship. Nor does it expand the horizon of total living.

In the wilderness, Moses had ensured sustenance for the people: admittedly, a feeble sustenance, always identical to the point of boredom - but reassuring. 

Like ancient religion: good for all seasons; that is also good on the surface.

The 'Son of Man' is the person endowed with full humanity, depicting man in the divine condition.

He does not repeat the past: he is always surprisingly on the other side (v.25) to make himself that "I don't know what": 'perfume' of the outgoing Church.

Eros beyond, which overcomes attachments, habit, established balances.

In short, Christ does not want passive friends, those who do not want the discomfort of listening and dialogue; who shun suffering, affronts, or the consequences of new initiatives.

The Lord does not equate spiritual well-being with the extinguishing (toxic) of the flame of the soul that does not measure itself, that does not like questioning, and comparisons.

In our journey, the very apprehension of situations that worry and manifest vulnerabilities are precious intimate signals.

The same applies to failures, which force us to rework the 'no events', look inside, shift our gaze.

Assemblies of Faith' are the Fraternities that in the unfolding of relationships, horizons and even insecurities do not leave us conditioned and 'regulated', shaped by epidermic gazes, by others.

Peers who do not keep food and treasures for themselves, experiencing together a special aptitude for appreciation and wholeness - without secret, hysterical, lacerating dissociations.

The Work required is not at all about the fulfilments of the law, the pile of 'works', or the fulfilment of the many prescriptions... to 'merit'.

It does not resemble the usual set-up work [the "doing": v.28], for it is rather singular Action of God [Subject] in us.

Observances must be tediously piled on top of one another. Instead, the divine Work that is accomplished in our every gesture is precious Virtue.

Unexpected energy; a new opportunity to meet ourselves, our brothers, another shore - and to detach ourselves from externality.

Jesus self-reveals himself in the sign of the breaking of the Bread, "food that endures for the Life of the Eternal One" (v.27), that is, that results in an experience that already here and now possesses the indestructible quality of God's own intimacy.

In order to receive the well-diminished Food that sustains and becomes in us the source of complete life, the "work" to be done does not belong to the kind of work that we can do - not even according to law and devotion.

It can only be a response to the work that the Father Himself performs within each of us, even if it does not immediately appear brilliant and purposeful.

And here is the reversal guaranteed by the adventure of Faith:

Religious submission is undermined by acceptance, which has a far less mortifying (or reductionist) sense; on the contrary, respectful of attempts, and creative.

It does not merely present a kind of elitist and normalised depersonalisation: e.g. 'eyes open', pleasures not to be experienced, 'bills to be paid'; and so on.

The relationship with God changes.

It becomes purely 'welcoming'. Yet inventive, by Name: unrepeatable and personal.

No longer passive renunciation, rebuke, purification, obedience [lordly appearances].

Foundational Eros does not scold us: it is uniquely Gift.

But only His work is reliable, albeit whimsical, unaligned, changeable, totally unpredictable.

And Us? Spontaneous, transparent, unbothered correspondence; not covered by tame activism.

Only thus will the 'giving in' not somatise into acts of protest. For a healthy Reciprocity, respectful of our character and ascendant.

Thus the attraction will not fade. It wants its peaks every day; it is not enough for it to turn into a normal symbiosis, then a habit.

Rather, dream of a broad Path; in depth. Of regeneration and similarity - involving and projecting, but not absorbing.The rest unfortunately remains ineffective or ambiguous sequelae; leading the soul always at war with itself and others.

Binary that here and there can only manifest blind, one-sided, forced caricatures of His Image - despite the pretensions of excellence.

Mechanisms that hurt.

To internalise and live the message:

How do you discern the qualitative difference between Works of Law and Works of Faith?

Food of the Eternal and Faith [by Teresa Girolami].

In today's passage, after the multiplication of the loaves, the crowd chases Jesus to the other shore, towards Capernaum.

And immediately the Lord puts his finger on the sore spot by emphasising that people seek Him not because of the signs seen, but because they are satiated.

A quest driven not by faith, but perhaps by need.

And, to those who ask what to fulfil in order to do the works of God, the Lord urges the work par excellence: believing.

Jesus dismounts and shifts his gaze from the law to Faith.

Wonderful context that in the time of Francis and Clare induced the poor people of Assisi to evolve their path of trust and abandonment in God.

In the extraordinary Franciscan Sources we find Francis himself called by the Lord to a leap of faith.

"The Saint found great consolation in the Lord's visits and was assured by them that the foundations of his Order would always remain stable [...].

Being troubled by bad examples, and having resorted one day, so bitterly, to prayer, he felt himself addressed in this way by the Lord:

"Why are you, little man, troubled? Perhaps I made you pastor of my Order in such a way that you would forget that I remain its principal patron?

That is why I have chosen you, simple man, so that those who will, may follow the works that I will do in you and that must be imitated by all others.

I have called you: I will preserve and shepherd you, I will make up with new religious the void left by the others, to the point of giving birth to them if they were not already born.

'Do not therefore be troubled, but wait for your salvation, for if the Order should be reduced even to only three brothers, my help will always be stable'.

From that day it was customary to say that the virtue of a single holy friar overcomes a quantity, however great, of imperfects, as a single ray of light dispels the thickest darkness" (FF 742).

To him who believes in Him who makes us righteous, it is his faith that is reckoned to him for righteousness (cf. Rom 4:4-5).

S. Clare, then, lived literally what Jesus suggests in this Gospel passage: be concerned about food that lasts forever.

In fact, Pope Gregory, with the Bull "Quo elongati" [Up to what point] of 28 September 1230, forbade the Friars Minor from entering monasteries without a special licence from the Holy See - and that only those brothers deputed to do so could take care of the Poor Clares.

In this context, here is what the Sources attest:

"Once, when the Lord Pope Gregory had forbidden any monk to go to the monasteries of the Women without his permission, the pious Mother regretted that the sisters would more rarely have the food of sacred doctrine and groaning said:

"Take them all away from us now, the brothers, after you have taken away those who gave us the nourishment of life!"

And she immediately sent all the brothers back to the minister, not wanting to have beggars to provide the material bread, when they no longer had those who provided them with the bread of the spirit.

But when Pope Gregory learned of this, he immediately put the prohibition back into the power of the general minister" (FF 3232).

Solicitude of a soul in love with the eternal food and willing to renounce everything for It.

"Work not for the food that perishes, but for the food that remains for the life of the LORD [...]" (Jn 6:27).

"This is the Work of God: that you believe in him whom he has sent" (Jn 6:29).

[Teresa Girolami].

Opening the horizon

We are in the synagogue of Capernaum where Jesus is giving his well-known discourse after the multiplication of the loaves. People had tried to make him king, but Jesus had withdrawn, first to the mountain with God, with the Father, and then to Capernaum. Not seeing him, she had set out to look for him, had boarded the boats to reach the other side of the lake and had finally found him. But Jesus knew well the reason for so much enthusiasm in following him and he also says it clearly: you "seek me not because you have seen signs [because your heart has been moved], but because you have eaten of those loaves and been satisfied" (v. 26). Jesus wants to help people go beyond the immediate satisfaction of their material needs, important though they are. He wants to open up to a horizon of existence that is not simply that of the daily concerns of eating, dressing, a career. Jesus speaks of a food that does not perish, that it is important to seek and receive. He says: "Give yourselves not for the food that does not last, but for the food that remains for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you" (v. 27).The crowd does not understand, they believe that Jesus is asking for the observance of precepts in order to obtain the continuation of that miracle, and they ask: "What must we do to do the works of God?" (v. 28). Jesus' response is clear: "This is the work of God: that you believe in him whom he has sent" (v. 29). The centre of existence, what gives meaning and firm hope to the often difficult journey of life is faith in Jesus, the encounter with Christ. We too ask, "what must we do to have eternal life?" And Jesus says: "believe in me". Faith is the fundamental thing. It is not a question here of following an idea, a project, but of encountering Jesus as a living Person, of letting oneself be totally involved by Him and His Gospel. Jesus invites us not to stop at the purely human horizon and to open up to the horizon of God, the horizon of faith. He demands only one thing: to accept God's plan, that is, "to believe in him whom he has sent" (v. 29). Moses had given Israel the manna, the bread from heaven, with which God himself had fed his people. Jesus does not give something, He gives Himself: He is the 'true bread, come down from heaven', He, the living Word of the Father; in the encounter with Him we encounter the living God.

"What must we do to do the works of God?" (v. 28) asks the crowd, ready to act, so that the miracle of the bread may continue. But Jesus, the true bread of life that satiates our hunger for meaning, for truth, cannot be "earned" by human labour; he comes to us only as a gift of God's love, as God's work to be asked for and accepted.

Dear friends, in the days laden with occupation and problems, but also in those of rest and relaxation, the Lord invites us not to forget that if it is necessary to worry about material bread and replenish our strength, it is even more fundamental to grow in our relationship with Him, to strengthen our faith in Him who is the "bread of life", who fills our desire for truth and love.

[Pope Benedict, Angelus 5 August 2012].

Verb "Believe", noun "Faith

1. The first and fundamental point of reference of this catechesis are the universally known professions of the Christian faith. They are also called "symbols of faith". The Greek word 'symbolon' meant the half of a broken object (e.g. of a seal) that was presented as the sign of recognition. The broken parts were put together to verify the identity of the bearer. Hence the further meanings of the 'symbol': proof of identity, letters of credence and even a treaty or contract of which the 'symbolon' was the proof. The transition from this meaning to that of a collection or summary of the things referred to and documented was quite natural. In our case 'symbols' mean the collection of the main truths of faith, i.e. what the Church believes in. Systematic catechesis contains instructions on what the Church believes in, i.e. the contents of the Christian faith. Hence also the fact that 'symbols of faith' are the first and fundamental point of reference for catechesis.

2. Among the various ancient 'symbols of faith', the most authoritative is the 'apostolic symbol', of very ancient origin and commonly recited in the 'prayers of the Christian'. It contains the main truths of the faith transmitted by the apostles of Jesus Christ. Another famous ancient symbol is the 'Nicene-Constantinopolitan' symbol: it contains the same truths of the apostolic faith authoritatively elucidated in the first two ecumenical councils of the universal Church: Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381). The custom of the 'symbols of faith' proclaimed as the fruit of the Church's Councils has also been renewed in our century: in fact, after the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI pronounced the 'profession of faith' known as the Creed of the People of God (1968), which contains the entirety of the truths of the Church's faith with special consideration of those contents to which the last Council had given expression, or those points around which doubts had been raised in recent years.

The symbols of faith are the main point of reference for the present catechesis. They, however, refer to the whole of the 'deposit of the word of God', constituted by Holy Scripture and the apostolic tradition, being only a concise synthesis of it. Through the professions of faith, therefore, we too aim to go back to that immutable "deposit", on the basis of the interpretation that the Church, assisted by the Spirit, has given it over the centuries.

3. Each of the aforementioned 'symbols' begins with the word 'creed'. Each of them in fact serves not so much as instruction but as profession. The contents of this profession are the truths of the Christian faith: all are rooted in this first word 'I believe'. And it is precisely on this expression 'I believe' that we wish to focus in this first catechesis.The expression is present in everyday language, even independently of any religious content, and especially of Christian content. 'I believe you' means: I trust you, I am convinced that you speak the truth. "I believe in what you say" means: I am convinced that the content of your words corresponds to objective reality.

In this common use of the word 'I believe', certain essential elements are emphasised. "To believe" means to accept and recognise as true and corresponding to reality the content of what is said, i.e. the words of another person (or even of several persons), because of his (or their) credibility. This credibility decides in a given case the particular authority of the person: the authority of truth. Thus by saying 'I believe', we are simultaneously expressing a twofold reference: to the person and to the truth; to the truth, in view of the person who enjoys particular credibility.

4. The word 'I believe' appears very often in the pages of the Gospel and throughout Holy Scripture. It would be very useful to compare and analyse all the points in the Old and New Testaments that enable us to grasp the biblical meaning of 'believing'. Alongside the verb 'to believe' we also find the noun 'faith' as one of the central expressions throughout the Bible. We even find a certain type of "definitions" of faith, such as for example: "faith is the foundation of things hoped for and proof of things not seen" from the Letter to the Hebrews (Heb 11:1).

These biblical data have been studied, explained, developed by the Fathers and theologians over two thousand years of Christianity, as the enormous exegetical and dogmatic literature we have at our disposal attests. As in 'symbols', so in all theology, 'believing', 'faith' is a fundamental category. It is also the starting point of catechesis, as the first act with which we respond to God's revelation.

5. In the present discussion we will limit ourselves to just one source, which however sums up all the others. It is the conciliar constitution Dei Verbum of Vatican II. We read the following: "It pleased God in his goodness and wisdom to reveal himself and to manifest the mystery of his will (cf. Eph 1:9), through which men, through Christ, the Word made flesh in the Holy Spirit, have access to the Father and are made sharers in the divine nature . . . (cf. Eph 2:18; 2 Pet 1:4)" (Dei Verbum, 2).

"To the God who reveals is due the obedience of faith (cf. Rom 16:26; 1:5; 2 Cor 10:5-6), by which man freely surrenders himself to God in his entirety, lending him 'the full obedience of intellect and will' (Vatican Council I, Dei Filius, 3) and voluntarily consenting to the revelation given by him" (Dei Verbum, 5).

In these words of the conciliar document is contained the answer to the question: what does it mean to "believe". The explanation is concise, but condenses a great wealth of content. We will have to penetrate more extensively into this explanation of the Council later on, which has a scope equivalent to that of a technical definition, so to speak.

One thing is first of all obvious: there is a genetic and organic link between our Christian 'creed' and that particular 'initiative' of God himself, which is called 'revelation'.

Therefore, catechesis on the 'creed' (faith) must be carried out together with catechesis on divine revelation. Logically and historically, revelation precedes faith. Faith is conditioned by revelation. It is man's response to divine revelation.

Let us say right now that it is possible and right to give this answer, because God is credible. No one is like him. No one possesses the authority of truth like it. In no case is the conceptual and semantic value of the word so usual in human language: 'I believe', 'I believe you', realised as in faith in God.

[Pope John Paul II, General Audience 13 March 1985].

Faith in Christ

1. Looking at the primary objective of the Jubilee, which is "the reinvigoration of the faith and witness of Christians" (Tertio millennio adveniente, 42), after having outlined in the previous catecheses the fundamental traits of the salvation offered by Christ, we pause today to reflect on the faith that he expects from us.

To God who reveals himself - teaches Dei Verbum - is due "the obedience of faith" (n. 5). God revealed himself in the Old Covenant, demanding from his chosen people a fundamental adherence of faith. In the fullness of time, this faith is called to be renewed and developed in response to the revelation of the incarnate Son of God. Jesus expressly requests it, addressing his disciples at the Last Supper: "You have faith in God; have faith also in me" (Jn 14:1).

2. Jesus had already asked the group of twelve Apostles for a profession of faith in his person. At Caesarea Philippi, after questioning the disciples about the opinions expressed by the people concerning his identity, he asks: "Who do you say that I am?" (Mt 16:15). The answer comes from Simon: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (16:16).

Immediately Jesus confirms the value of this profession of faith, emphasising that it does not proceed simply from a human thought, but from a heavenly inspiration: "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for neither flesh nor blood has revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven" (Mt 16:17). These expressions of a strong Semitic colour designate the total, absolute and supreme revelation: that which refers to the person of Christ the Son of God.

The profession of faith made by Peter will remain the definitive expression of Christ's identity. Mark takes up the terms to introduce his Gospel (cf. Mk 1:1), John refers to it at the conclusion of his, stating that he wrote it so that people might believe "that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God", and so that, believing, they might have life in his name (cf. Jn 20:31).

3. In what does faith consist? The Constitution Dei Verbum explains that with it "man freely surrenders himself to God in his entirety, lending him 'the full obedience of intellect and will' and voluntarily consenting to the revelation given by Him" (n. 5). Faith is, therefore, not only adherence of the intellect to revealed truth, but also obedience of the will and self-giving to God who reveals himself. It is an attitude that commits one's entire existence.

The Council goes on to recall that faith requires "the grace of God, which anticipates and assists, and the interior help of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and turns it to God, opens the eyes of the mind, and gives everyone gentleness in consenting to and believing the truth" (ibid.). One can see how faith, on the one hand, makes one accept the truth contained in Revelation and proposed by the Magisterium of those who, as Pastors of the People of God, have received a "certain charism of truth" (Dei Verbum, 8). On the other hand, faith also urges true and profound consistency, which must be expressed in all aspects of a life modelled on that of Christ.

4. Fruit as it is of grace, faith exerts an influence on events. This is admirably seen in the exemplary case of the Blessed Virgin. At the Annunciation, her adherence of faith to the angel's message is decisive for the very coming of Jesus into the world. Mary is the Mother of Christ because she first believed in Him.

At the wedding feast of Cana, Mary by her faith obtains the miracle. Faced with a response from Jesus that seemed less than favourable, she maintained a confident attitude, thus becoming a model of the bold and constant faith that overcomes obstacles.

Bold and insistent was also the faith of the Canaanite woman. To this woman, who had come to ask for the healing of her daughter, Jesus had opposed the Father's plan, which limited his mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The Canaanite woman responded with all the strength of her faith and obtained the miracle: 'Woman, truly great is your faith! May it be done to you as you wish" (Mt 15:28).

5. In many other instances, the Gospel testifies to the power of faith. Jesus expresses his admiration for the centurion's faith: 'Truly I tell you, in Israel I have found no one with such great faith' (Mt 8:10). And to Bartimaeus he says: "Go, your faith has saved you" (Mk 10:52). He repeats the same thing to the haemorrhagic woman (cf. Mk 5:34).

The words addressed to the father of the epileptic, who desired the healing of his son, are no less impressive: 'All things are possible for him who believes' (Mk 9:23).

The role of faith is to cooperate with this omnipotence. Jesus demands such cooperation to the extent that, on his return to Nazareth, he performs almost no miracles for the reason that the inhabitants of his village did not believe in him (cf. Mk 6:5-6). For the purpose of salvation, faith has a decisive importance for Jesus.

St Paul will develop Christ's teaching when, in contrast to those who wanted to base the hope of salvation on the observance of the Jewish law, he forcefully affirms that faith in Christ is the only source of salvation: "For we hold that man is justified by faith, regardless of the works of the law" (Rom 3:28). We must not, however, forget that St Paul was thinking of that authentic and full faith "which works through charity" (Gal 5:6). True faith is animated by love of God, which is inseparable from love of one's brothers and sisters.

[Pope John Paul II, General Audience 18 March 1998].