April 20, 2021 – Tuesday of the 3rd Week of Easter
(Acts 7: 51 – 8: 1a; Ps: 31; John 6: 30 – 35)
Jesus never referred to Himself as the Christ, the Anointed One rather He spoke of Himself as the “Son of Man, as The Resurrection and the Life, The Good Shepherd, The Way, Truth and Life” and in today’s Gospel “The Bread of Life…” He is all this for us – He gifts us extravagantly and He leads us unerringly.
We are very familiar with the process of flour becoming bread, in fact, somewhat of experts. There is a parallel between the process of bread making and Jesus being “The Bread of life.” The seed planted and nourished becomes wheat, is ground into flour, water and ingredients are added and finally the dough is baked…and there is bread!
In the Creed we pray our belief in Jesus and we recite the divine process how the Son of God became bread for us. “He was born of the Virgin Mary, became Man, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried…” A process of over thirty years – a humble way informed, conformed to the will of the Father so that He is truly the one Bread of Life.
As the Bread of Life, Jesus is consumed by us so that we, in turn, become a bread of life, life that is faith, hope, charity. But just as Jesus, in His sacred humanity, mysteriously became this Bread of Life so the process of our own lives affects how we become this bread. How we accept or reject situations, how we ignore or learn from life, how we bless or curse what comes – all these help create a bread similar to the Lord or one hardly recognizable.
It takes but a moment, hardly a second, to receive the Bread of Life but in the moments, the hours, the days that follow it is how we live that is proof positive that the Bread of Life, the Lord Jesus Himself, has been truly received, really embraced, fully obeyed and faithfully followed.
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