Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Therefore they said to Him, “What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do? Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”

Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Then they said to Him, “Lord, give us this bread always.” And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.” (John 6:30–35)

It was needful not only to remove Moses from God-befitting authority, according to their conception, and to show that he was a minister of that miraculous working, rather than the bestower of it, but also to lessen the wonder though miraculously wrought, and to show that it was nothing at all in comparison with the greater. For imagine Christ calling out something like this,

The great things, sirs, you consider among the most insignificant and petty, and the generosity of the Lord of all you have rationed out with most petty limits. For with no slight folly do you suppose that the manna is the Bread from heaven, although it fed the race alone of the Jews in the wilderness, while there are other nations besides without number throughout the world. And you supposed that God willed to show forth lovingkindness so narrowly, as to give food to one people only…. But when the time of the Truth was at our doors, My Father gives you the Bread from heaven, which was of old foreshadowed to them in the gift of the manna.

For let no one think (He says) that that was in truth the Bread from heaven, but rather let him give his judgment in favor of That, which is clearly able to feed the whole earth, and to give in full life unto the world.

He accuses, therefore, the Jew of cleaving to the typical observances, and refusing to examine into the beauty of the Truth. For that was not, properly speaking, the manna, but the Only-Begotten Word of God Himself, who proceeds from the Essence of the Father, since He is by Nature Life, and gives life to all things. For since He sprang of the Living Father, He also is by Nature Life, and since the work of that which is by Nature Life is to enliven, Christ enlivens all things. For as our earthly bread which is gotten of the earth does not permit the frail nature of flesh to waste away: so He too, through the operation of the Spirit gives life to our spirit, and not only so, but also holds together our very body unto incorruption.

Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John 3.6