HOMILY OF 3RD THURSDAY IN EASTER — YEAR A
HOMILY OF 3RD THURSDAY IN EASTER — YEAR A
HOMILY THEME: “I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE”
BY: Fr. Mike Lagrimas
Acts 8:26-40, Ps. 66:8-9,16-17,20, John 6:44-51
Jesus said to the crowds, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day. It is written in the prophets: ‘They shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
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In the Lord’s Prayer, we ask the Heavenly Father: “Give us this day our daily bread.” For most of us, however, we may just be thinking of material bread and food as well as other temporal things that we need for our earthly existence. But the Lord is not only concerned about man’s physical well-being and salvation, but also for his total salvation – body and soul. Hence, in teaching this prayer, the ‘bread’ that He refers to is not limited to material bread, but it also includes spiritual bread, that is, the Word of God. For, indeed, as Scriptures points out, “one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God” (Deut 8:2-3; Mt 4:4).
Today’s passage is mainly a reiteration of the Lord’s declaration: ʺI am the bread of life.ʺ But towards the end of the passage, Jesus goes further, moving from the spiritual sense of bread to the sacramental sense of the Eucharist.
Jesus is the Living Bread because he is the very Word of God. And He uses the formal expression ‘I AM’, alluding to His divine origin. This Bread comes directly from God and will bring everlasting life to those who eat it.
And this Bread is His own flesh, life-giving flesh: “and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” Giving His flesh simply means Jesus will offer His life as sacrifice for the salvation and eternal life of mankind.
This statement is the turning point in His discourse. He is not anymore talking about something purely spiritual. He is now talking about His own flesh, life-giving flesh. In the verses that follow, He will further clarify what He means in order to make sure His listeners understand what He is really saying.
In talking initially about the Word of God as the Bread of Life, and later saying that this Bread is His flesh, Jesus is now pointing to the intimate relationship between the Eucharist and the Mystery of the Incarnation: “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (Jn 1:14).
The saints, all through the ages, have complete grasp of what the Lord really means by these words. It is clear to them that the Eucharist is, indeed, the flesh of the Lord that is food for eternal life.
St. John Chrysostom said, “How many of you say: I should like to see His face, His garments, His shoes. You do see Him, you touch Him, you eat Him. He gives Himself to you, not only that you may see Him, but also to be your food and nourishment.”
St. Justin the Martyr says the same thing as well: “As by the Word of God, Jesus our Savior was Flesh and had both Flesh and Blood for our salvation, so also the food which has been blessed by the word of prayer instituted by Him is both the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Incarnate.”
May we not only be concerned about material food that nourishes our body but cannot prevent death. Let the words of the Lord to the crowd continually guide us: “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (Jn 6:27). Let us ask God for the grace to overcome our spiritual blindness so that we may always see clearly the heavenly realities that abound behind the material realities around us.
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