Bread of Life

Gospel: John 6: 44-51

The Eucharist is not a magic food; we do not consume it once and automatically transformed into something entirely new like a Marvel superhero.  In giving us the image of bread, Jesus is noting that the Eucharist is like our daily bread of ordinary food: its effect on us is gradual and cumulative.  So too in the spiritual life the process of illumination and divinization is gradual and cumulative.  Just as Nicodemus did not move from darkness to light immediately but over time, so too do we progress in the spiritual life through participation in the bread of life.  

The disciples of Jesus were continually with him over a span of a few years.  They were with him at table quite often, and yet they continually misunderstood and failed the Lord in so many ways.  However, over time they gradually came to see what the Lord Jesus intended for them to see - they grew in illumination.  These moments of communion were not in vain; they had been building one upon another to greater and greater identification with the Lord Jesus: they were becoming like him in their love and mercy to others.  

So in our lives we cannot grow weary or despair in our relationship with the Lord.  We might feel like failures as the disciples did in the Gospels, but if we step back and reflect on our time with the Lord we will see that we are different than we were in years past, that God has used these moments of communion to good effect in our lives, and God will continue to do so throughout our life.  Let us not discourage ourselves - let us not discourage others - from partaking of the bread of life, for by it we grow in life and love and mercy with the Lord.