Sunday, August 5, 2012

Jesus, the Living Bread from heaven

In today's first reading, Ex 16:2-4, 12-15, God responds to the people's need for food. They are out in the desert, totally dependent upon God to keep them alive, to continue the journey to the Promised Land, and to thrive.  Only through the glorious deeds of the Lord, the Lord's compassion and love, is this possible for them and for us. God sends down food from heaven in abundance to meet their physical needs.  In the Gospel, Jn 6: 24-35, Jesus reveals that He is the Living Bread come down from heaven.  All who believe in Jesus and eat of His body and drink of His blood  will have eternal life.  Jesus gives of His total self for our salvation.  Fullness of Life, an abundance of Life, is a reality for all those who believe and imitate Christ's life of total self-giving, whether that be in marriage between husband and wife who, loyal  and committed to one another,  become "bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh," (cf. Gen) or whether in religious life, priesthood or the single life  where individuals surrender totally to the Lord in service to the People of God, the Church.  In other words, as Jesus says to His disciples in today's Gospel, fullness of life is not about perishable things but the imperishable, that is, about LOVE, the love modelled in the Trinity between the Father and the Son through the Spirit in the total gift of self to one another for the sake of other's well-being, yours and mine.  For whom, am I willing to give totally of self? 

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