On John 6-41-59
HEN, AS WE HEARD in the gospel when it was read, our Lord, Jesus Christ, had said that he was the bread which came down from heaven, the Jews murmured and said, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How then does he say, 'I have come down from heaven?'" These men were far from the bread of heaven and they did not know how to hunger for it. They had weak jaws of the heart; they were deaf with open ears; they saw and stood blind. For indeed this bread searches out the hunger of the interior man; wherefore in another place he says, "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall have their fill."1
(2) But the Apostle Paul says that Christ is justice for us.2 And, by reason of this, he who hungers for this bread, let him hunger for justice, but the justice which comes down from heaven, the justice which God gives, not which man makes for himself. For if man did not make justice for himself, the same Apostle would not say of the Jews, "for, not knowing of the justice of God, and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to the justice of God."3 Hence, there were those who did not understand the bread coming down from heaven, because, sated with their own justice, they did not hunger for the justice of God. What does this mean, the justice of God and the justice of man? Here [that] is called the justice of God, not by which God is just but which God gives to man that man may be just through God. But what
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: Tractates on the Gospel of John.
Volume: 2.
Contributors: John W. Rettig - Translator, Saint Augustine Bishop of Hippo - Author.
Publisher: Catholic University of America Press.
Place of publication: Washington, DC.
Publication year: 1988.
Page number: 259.
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