By Fr. Roy Cimagala
THAT’S what we can gather from what Christ said about himself being the Bread of Life. “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eats of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world.” (Jn 6,51)
This gives us a great reason to be truly happy and confident in our life which will always be marked with all sorts of challenges, trials, difficulties, etc. Christ wants to give himself completely to us so he and us can be one as we should, since we are God’s image and likeness, despite our weaknesses, limitations and sins.
We need to process this truth of our faith thoroughly and try our best to receive Christ as the Bread of Life in Holy Communion as worthily and frequently as possible. We need to enliven our belief that in Christ we have everything, we have what is truly and ultimately needed by us. Many of our needs are passing, are of a temporal nature. It is Christ who we truly and ultimately need.
And he gives himself so completely to us as to make himself bread to be eaten by us. Although he is like air since we cannot truly live without him, he compares and makes himself bread, because unlike air, he as bread has to be deliberately sought.
This duty of seeking him is what we have to be more aware of. In the Gospel itself, we hear our Lord saying, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” (Mt 6,33) Not only that, we should also spread this most wonderful truth as widely as possible.
In the first reading of the Mass on Thursday of the Third Week of Easter (cfr. Acts 8,26-40), we are told about the Apostle Philip who preached about Christ to an Ethiopian eunuch, giving us an example of how eager we should be to make Christ known, loved and received by as many people as possible.
Christ as the Bread of Life means that he is truly and really with us even while he sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven. We are not left only with some picture or souvenir or symbol of his. And he accompanies us in our earthly sojourn, giving us the ultimate means we need to tackle whatever we may encounter in this life.
It’s a madness of love to which we have to correspond as best that we can. God himself gives us the grace in abundance to enable us to correspond to that love. We should not be scared of the tremendous prospect before us. But it’s up to us if we choose to love him or not. We should do everything to make use of what God is making available to us.
We are told that if we are generous with God, God will even be more generous with us, for he cannot be outdone in generosity. He assures us that whatever little we give to him will always yield us a hundredfold. It’s always good to keep this divine assurance in mind.
We have to learn to subordinate our earthly and temporal concerns and plans to the task of seeking Christ. We have to be wary of being influenced mainly if not solely by the standards of practicality, convenience and other worldly values. That’s our problem. God is often left behind in the play of our competing interests.
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
