Jesus said to the crowds:
"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him,
Why was Jesus insisting once again on the necessity of being drawn by the Father to come to him? Why not just proceed to teach, rather than first adding a disclaimer about what was required to receive his message? In a way, it seemed as if he were challenging the crowd, asking them to open themselves to the possibility that the Father was revealing divine truth to them. They knew how to learn from men. But he was asking them to be open to being "taught by God". And in this way the challenge was a bit of a provocation, since no one would want to miss what God was teaching.
Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.
Not that anyone has seen the Father
except the one who is from God;
he has seen the Father.
Jesus was leading the crowds into the fullness of truth. And part of the difficulty in receiving that truth was the fact that he himself was the center of it all, the way, the truth, and the life (see John 14:6). It wasn't as it was with other religious figures where their teaching could stand independently of their own identities. Jesus was, in many ways, his own message. He had been conveying this at a spiritual level, presenting himself as the bread of true wisdom. But he was progressing to an even more dramatic revelation. He was attempting to build up the belief of the people so that they could accept that he was "the bread of life" not only spiritually, but indeed in his very "Flesh for the life of the world".
Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;
this is the bread that comes down from heaven
so that one may eat it and not die.
God provided manna to their ancestors in the desert. It gave them strength for their journey but it did not change the fate that awaited all women and men since the Garden of Eden. The food of immortality had been permanently sealed behind the flaming sword that forever banished humanity from Eden. But the bread that Jesus wanted to give was really food of immortality, given, as if from a new tree of life. God never delighted in the death of the sinner and always, from the first, had a plan to crush the head of the serpent who brought death into the world (see Wisdom 2:24).
I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my Flesh for the life of the world.
The reason for the long run up preparing people to receive this teaching was precisely because Jesus knew that it was difficult to receive, indeed humanly impossible. Even his closest disciples did not understand. But they resolved to stick with the one who spoke the words of everlasting life. They were sufficiently open to the leading of the Father that even their own failure to understand wasn't going to make them abandon Jesus as many others did.
In the first reading from Acts we see another individual, an Ethiopian eunuch, who was open to being led by the Father and taught by God. This did not happen as he sat alone in his chariot, but rather through the instrumentality of the deacon Philip, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. From this encounter we can see the importance of being open to human guides who are led by the Holy Spirit when we lack understanding. It is still ultimately the Father drawing, and God teaching, but he nevertheless delights to involve human agency in the process. So we ought not be too proud to learn from others who are educated in truth and filled with the Spirit. Further, we should not use the fact that God will lead others as a way to excuse ourselves from involvement in the process. Just as the Spirit empowered Philip to help the eunuch so too does he subtly draw us into encounters where we can proclaim Jesus to others. And it isn't nearly so much about what we know in advance or bring to the encounter ourselves as it is to our willingness to be led. The Spirit is more than able to stage an encounter where the interesting thing we just heard is exactly what someone else needs to hear.
Then Philip opened his mouth and, beginning with this Scripture passage,
he proclaimed Jesus to him.
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