Wednesday of 3rd Week of Easter Wednesday 13th April 2016
“Jesus said to them : ’I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry ; whoever believes in me will never thirst. But I tell you : you can see me and still you do not believe.”
In this Gospel passage we can contemplate how Jesus is concerned by the fact that we go hungry and thirsty. We can bear witness to his solicitude towards us, and how he doesn’t remain indifferent to us when we suffer.
We must believe even more in the Tender Love God has for us by giving Jesus to us. In hiding Himself in the Eucharist, Jesus shows what an unbelievable distance he runs in order to quench our thirst and do away with our hunger.
Indeed, God comes and fills all our longings and expectations in the most marvellous way that we could ever imagine – nothing like it exists.
In order to enter into this Word that enlightens us, we need to be most, for attentive for God knows how to speak to us in a multitude of ways.
God speaks to us through the divine maternity of Mary-this is first and foremost an act of faith in God who brings about marvels. Mary gives us her tiny little One, Jesus, He who gave His Heart to his mother.
Mary gave Jesus her very person. For her, Jesus is her Bread of Life, He is the Eternal Word that pre existed before all time.
Jesus came to save humanity, to bring it into God’s Greatest Love. It will be very hard for the apostles to enter into this mystery! The multiplication of the loaves was prefigured by the manna in the desert, but the apostles did not understand that it announced the Mystery of the multiplication of the loaves, the miracle performed by the Son of God, Jesus.
“Everyone whom the Father gives me will come to me; I will certainly not reject anyone who comes to me, because I have come from heaven, not to do my own will, but to do the will of him who sent me. Now the will of him who sent me is that I should lose nothing of all that he has given to me, but that I should raise it up on the last day.”
Hunger and thirst are but a pale reflect of a deeper desire that is hidden in each person - a desire of Divine Life which Jesus alone can bring to us.
’It is the will of my Father : whoever sees the Son and believes in Him will have Eternal Life.’
We ought to present ourselves to Jesus, we ought to go to him and aspire for the gift of Infinite Love that is coming. We must recognise it and receive it in faith once it is revealed.
Mary’s heart and being were filled to the brim by the Loving Presence of her Son Jesus.She understood the Gift of Love which God made to humanity.
When Jesus gives us His Body and Blood as food and drink, we come back to His origins through which such a Precious Gift came to us.
Mary gave Jesus her body and blood, her whole being.
We must come back tot his personal gift, and if we do this we are restored to true life… The Bread of Life is given to us so that we shall be transformed into the Life of Jesus, and that we become who we truly are, children of our Heavenly Father.
Jesus comes and niches in that most intimate place within our hearts in order to change it, and so that we come to acknowledge of the Father, thus entering into a communion of personal love with Him.
“Yes, such is my Father’s Will, that whoever sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal Life and I shall raise him up on the las day.”
These Words of Jesus stimulate us and draw us closer to Him each day in prayer so as to receive his Body, so as to receive this new Life.
Jesus, Saviour of his People, nourishes and defends us. And so we pass from concerns about material things and food, to the one concern of doing the Will of our Heavenly Father.
There is hidden in this gift of the multiplication of the loaves a relationship to the One who gives the bread :
’I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never hunger.’
The true Bread is the one that remains for eternal Life.
At the Resurrection, Jesus is present amongst his people who believes in Him, He is present in the community who celebrates him. In celebrating the Eucharist, we receive in a small host, in a sacramental way, the Body that was woven in Mary’s womb. Begging for love, Jesus provokes in her a love far greater than it was possible for her to carry in her heart. When Mary had her infant Jesus be in communion with her own blood, Jesus answered completely all her aspirations. The Bread of Life really is the Son of the Father who tells us : ’Whoever comes to me will never go hungry.’