We all have likes and dislikes, what about bread? There are many varieties, my favourite is one that, this side of eternity, I will never taste again. My Grandmother Kate Butler would bake bread, though I am not sure how she did it, as during my early childhood the fireplace was open with a crane on which hung pots and kettles, but I do remember her bread, it was large and round with a cross incised into the top, one of the ingredients was butter milk which gave it a cake-like texture. It is now something of memory rather than taste or texture. It was something transient, something temporary like all food stuffs, in fact like most things in life.

The transience of human existence and the things that we value is a big theme in the Bible. The only thing that is constant, unchanging, eternal, forever, is God. At the dawn to time, planted into the soul of humanity, was the likeness of God, particularly God’s immortality in our soul. Perhaps that’s why over the entirety of human history we have always sensed that the limits of mortality is not the natural state of humanity. Even today people without religious belief talk of someone “passing over” (to where you may ask), it’s as though people cannot bring themselves to utter the “D” word fearing that it has some kind of power of finality over them.

But God never has been content to leave us to the darkness of some kind of neutral underworld, called Sheol in the Bible, or at worst eternity with the devil (remember that hell does exist). No. He created you for eternal life. God willing, the life that you have here is pale foreshadowing of eternal life in God, a life of wonder which no eye has seen and no ear has heard.

This Sunday, the feast of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, he hear part of something called the bread of life discourse, the setting has been the miraculous feeding of 5,000 people. Understandably Jesus’ listeners want more of a good thing, but Jesus tells them that He can do much more than providing a limitless supply of food. Eat bread and you get hungry again, but Jesus offers a different kind of nourishment, something limitless in its properties, something that does not go stale and decay, something that is the key to opening up the endless horizon of eternity – Himself in what we know as the Eucharist.

But, as always, we need to remember the setting for today’s story, the last supper had not happened and what Jesus was saying must have seemed to his listeners something deeply puzzling, deeply disturbing and even disgusting, for example the drinking of any blood was forbidden in the book of Leviticus. 

The point is that a person who is in union with Jesus is in union with the Father through the Holy Spirit. If you are in union with Jesus, you already have eternal life in you. How is this possible? Jesus has died and risen and can never die again, if you have Jesus in you also share in his eternal life. For those in union with Jesus death is merely a moment, come than gone.

As always Jesus goes further. He enables us to experience this union with Him not only in faith but in His very self in the Eucharist. When we receive the Eucharist we take into our very selves the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus, take a moment to think about how amazing this is. Reflect on the enormity of what is given to us. How can we ever be worthy of something like this? The truth is we can’t, but we can do our best to be worthy through the grace of confession and absolution anyone; who eats this bread will live for ever.

During Mass, when the host and the chalice are elevated, thank Jesus for His very presence with us; perhaps join with me in the silent prayer I have said in this moment from my earliest childhood, “My Lord and My God”.

With every blessing and the assurance of my daily prayers for your needs and intentions.

Fr Chris