Jesus's summer assignment

Jesus, help me to finish all my summer homework! Amen.

"I am the living bread that came down from heaven," Jesus said. "The bread that I give you is myself, and if you eat it, you'll live forever." The people got angry. "How can He give us Himself to eat?" they asked. Jesus answered: "If you don't eat my body and drink my blood, you will have no life in you."

Did you have schoolwork to do over the summer? Some kids have to read books or write essays. If you have homework during the summer, you might think that's unfair. It's summer! Who wants to do work?

Jesus got the same reaction to His lesson in this week's Gospel (John 6:51-58), teaching about Himself. He called Himself "bread from heaven" that they had to eat to be able to live forever in heaven someday -- but nobody wanted to hear it.

Like kids with summer homework, they got annoyed. They didn't understand what Jesus was saying about eating His body and drinking His blood, and probably wanted Him to talk about something else instead -- something cheerful!

If you have books to read or writing to do over the summer, it's to help you be prepared for the school year. Your teachers don't want you to forget good homework habits, and they want you to do some learning, even when you're on vacation.

Jesus' lesson was about preparing people, too. He knew that soon He'd be going back to heaven, but that before He left, He'd be showing people how to remember Him with Communion -- sharing bread and wine that would become His body and blood.

Jesus hadn't taught about Communion (also called the Eucharist) yet, but He wanted people to be prepared to understand it when He did. So He explained that He was like bread from heaven. That way, when people saw Him breaking bread and handing wine around, calling it His body and blood, they'd remember what He said before.

Learning about the Eucharist was like their summer homework!