DAILY GRACE
April 30, 2020, Thursday in the Third Week of Easter
Scripture: John 6:44-51
No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Meditation
“Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.”
Do you want to live forever? How much would you pay for eternal life? Someone did an Internet search for the words “how to live forever” and got almost 52 million hits! Some people go to great lengths to try and live forever, by arranging ahead come their death to have their dead bodies frozen in liquid nitrogen in hopes of future revival. Some try to do so by developing a gene therapy that will short-circuit the aging process. Perhaps a better question is: where do you want to live forever? Do you want to live forever on an earth beset by pandemics and sadness, or do you want eternal life with God in the perfect happiness of heaven?
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us: “This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. . . . Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.” Jesus is telling us the secret of eternal life, the secret that so many desperate people are paying huge sums of money to obtain. It’s ironic and more than a little sad to see people go to such extraordinary lengths to get something that is offered for free. It is like excavating a field to dig up a treasure that is sitting in plain sight.
As Jesus tells us in this Gospel, faith is the key that unlocks the door to this treasure: “Whoever believes has eternal life.” It takes faith to believe that the bread Jesus gives us is actually his body, his “flesh for the life of the world.” If we want to live forever, if we want to not just survive COVID-19 and keep on surviving in an endless parade of days in this world prone to suffering and sadness, we need only turn in faith and eat —- eat the Bread of Heaven.
Prayer
Thank you, Lord, for giving yourself to us. I often get caught up in the mundane details of each day and don’t think much about eternal life. But as I live in this passing world, help me to keep my final destination in mind: eternal life with you forever in heaven —- as well as eternal life with you now.
Contemplation
Lord, you have the words of eternal life.