“Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.”
'Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. — the contrast is absolute: manna sustained but could not prevent death. The generation that ate manna serves as negative exemplum.
Church Fathers on John 6:49
Our Lord wishes to reveal what He is; Verily, verily, I say to you, He that believes in Me, has everlasting life. As if He said; He that believes in Me has Me: but what is it to have Me? It is to have eternal life: for the Word which was in the beginning with God is life eternal, and the life was the light of men. Life underwent death, that life might kill death.
The multitude being urgent for bodily food, and reminding Him of that which was given to their fathers, He tells them that the manna was only a type of that spiritual food which was now to be tasted in reality, I am that bread of life.
I am the living bread which came down from heaven.
Read all 12 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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