It seems that people have responded to Jesus, the "bread come down from heaven" in different ways: some can't get enough; some try to ration Jesus; some take Jesus to others; and some aren't satisfied and just walk off in disgust.

The people in the gospel passage today are spiritually hungry but don't seem to know it. Jesus longs to give them real food. He wants them to embrace the life he has been living and make it their own. He wants them to know firsthand the unconditional love of God and share it generously with a world living in such a spiritual famine. Jesus is the bread of the soul as surely as the Torah or the Jewish Law and way of life is nourishment for the soul.

Jesus offers himself to us in the Eucharist so he might be our food and become our strength for the journey; so we might become one with him in everything. He offers us real food and real drink so we might truly live. As disciples of Jesus we are called to be pleasing to the Spirit within us by imitating God, by living Jesus, by being kind, compassionate and forgiving and by sharing what we have received.