Bread
“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life.” (John 6:44).
I have been thinking of the new Saint Carlo Acutis.
Had he lived, he would have been the same age as one of my younger sisters. He died as a teenager.
He lived a sort of ordinary life. By that I mean that he went to school and socialised with his friends. He enjoyed spending time online and is credited with building a website that documented Eucharistic miracles.
Perhaps one of his biggest miraculous interventions was the conversion of his own mother. It was through the encouragement of Saint Carlo that his other returned to the faith and began to practice her faith and receive the sacraments. Saint Carlo died before his two younger siblings were born. However, his mother saw him in her dream and he foretold the birth of those younger siblings…
One thing that is quite interesting about Saint Carlo is that he had a great love of the Blessed Eucharist. He knew that the Blessed Eucharist is God and he was very focused on wanting to please God with all of his life and knew that during his time on earth he had not wasted time by displeasing God.
That is a Saint worth studying…
“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.’” (John 6:44-51).
God did not tell us that He represented the Bread of Life or that He was going to provide a symbol of the Bread of Life. He told us that He Himself is the Bread of Life. He told us that He Himself is to be consumed as the Eucharist so that we may enter Heaven. This Sacrament was given to the Apostles and passed down through twenty centuries through every conceivable threat. There was persecution – especially in early Rome and also through the centuries (even unto today). Then there were heresies (where the infallible beliefs of our faith were questioned and doubted). And then there was the sin and the misinterpretation and the willing misunderstanding (and the unwilling misunderstanding too).
All of these things were attacks against the Blessed Eucharist. And yet, still the Blessed Eucharist prevailed…
And I have been thinking of what a Blessing it is to have the Blessed Eucharist accessible to me today where I can not only receive my Blessed Lord, but worship Him as well – any time that I want – simply by walking inside a church and sitting in the presence of God Himself in the Blessed Sacrament.
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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