John 6 - The Bread of Life

Jesus said to the crowds,
   “I am the bread of life;
   whoever comes to me will never hunger,
   and whoever believes in me will never thirst.

The recurring message of God’s love made human for us to bind with continues again in this reading.

Think about the imagery leading us to understand the reality of that love. “I am the bread of life,” he said. We eat bread to sustain our human and physical lives but those lives are only here and now. His bread brings us to an eternal life lasting throughout any understanding of endless time.

In this moment as I look out over a frozen lake that, during the summer months, brings to mind the Sea of Galilees, I try to envision what those who heard him speak thought as they heard those unbelieve words. God is the word and so to understand the words we have to believe in God but for those people who heard the first words, there was no context, no prior experience, nothing to prepare them for a revolutionary understanding of what we were being offered.

We have had countless generations each telling the stories of faith from one generation to the next to help us share the meaning of belief. I have heard the words of promise every day of my life and I still can’t penetrate the mystery. He offers us bread that has become his body yet the physical characteristics of the bread remain so we gain nourishment for body and soul. That is what we are. Not a body with a soul or soul with a body but we are body and soul. His bread feeds both.

What does this gift cost? Nothing because we could not afford to buy it. All that is asked of us is to believe. When I am presented with the opportunity to sit with a non-Catholic, I ask them to simply open up to the possibility of a miracle. I ask them to watch carefully during the epiclesis and the consecration that they might also see the invisible, hear the un-hearable and believe the unbelievable. We believe but we cannot explain what we believe because we are not God so don’t have the words that is him but we still believe.

Something happens when the Holy Spirit is called down that is impossible to describe and yet we can sense it and see it. I ask them to watch as people move up to receive the Eucharist and to watch how there is a change in most who receive. The face softens, the shoulders relax, a sense of peace wells up in them. Belief and encountering the reality what we believe transforms us as he brings us into him.

I believe in the real presence by watching for these changes. No amount of study or logic could get me there. I simply had to open to see what was happening even though I can never describe.

When we last discussed belief, my friend Rick commented that belief is not a static or passive act. Belief requires commitment and action. In the mass, we are instructed to engage in full, active and complete participation. In order to understand his real presence we must be present ourselves, fully engaged and to be all in to experience the Eucharistic transfiguration. Christ must be present in us and us in the Mass of Christ and when this happens Believe translates from what is possible into what really is, what really exists.

 God loves us and wants us to be with him always. All we have to do is believe and we become eternal in both body and soul.