Daily Reflection – 4/18/2024
Sacred Scripture
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.” (John 6:44-51)
Reflection
I believe that there lies within each of us a deep hunger for a form of nourishment that transcends the temporal— a spiritual longing that echoes through the ages. It’s the undercurrent that leads us to learn of God, to want to know God, to bring God alive in our lives.
And that is what drives the words of today’s scripture. When Jesus says that “I am the bread of life”, he is inviting us to contemplate the infinite depth of God’s love for us.
In times past, our ancestors walked in deserts, guided by divine promise, sustained by manna from heaven. This heavenly provision was a shadow, a foretaste of the true Bread of Life yet to be revealed. Through the sands of time echoes a promise—of an abundant life not bounded by the horizons of this world but stretching into the vastness of eternity. Where the manna ceased at the threshold of the Promised Land, Christ’s offering at the Lord’s Table transcends it.
To choose Jesus as our nourishment is to step beyond the realm of finite existence into the boundless grace and life in communion with the Father.
The true bread of life which Jesus offers is more than ritual and tradition; it is vibrant and transforming. It calls out to us, urging us to break free from material attachments and temporal standards. It calls us to root ourselves in the everlasting love of Christ. This hunger and this quest form the tapestry of our spiritual lives.
But it should also shape our physical lives. Think about this with me. If we spent more time and attention in becoming a “feeding people,” if we put more of our attention in becoming a community of the “bread of life,” if we took more seriously the reality of God’s own presence in our meal, we would spend less time and attention on things that separate us, that exclude others, that close our doors, and that questions God’s image in others.
In eating of this bread of life, we are proclaiming that God has called us to care for one another . . . if God could leave glory in order to reach us, then we too can leave the comforts of life, we too can leave our cushy pews, our comfortable places of worship, we too can walk out of the doors of our gatherings ready to align ourselves with the cruciform life that is life eternal.
That is the bread of life. A bread that sustains us daily. A bread that reminds us that we are part of Him. A bread that says that to partake of his banquet is to accept a seat at the table which binds us to one another and to Him who loves us.
Prayer of The Day
“Lord Jesus, you are the living bread which sustains me in this life. May I always hunger for the bread which comes from heaven and find in it the nourishment and strength I need to love and serve you wholeheartedly. May I always live in the joy, peace, and unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, both now and in the age to come.”
Daily Note
Jesus makes a claim only God can make: He is the true bread of heaven that can satisfy the deepest hunger we experience. The manna in the wilderness sustained the Israelites on their journey to the Promised Land. It could not produce eternal life for the Israelites. The bread which Jesus offers his disciples sustains us not only on our journey to the heavenly paradise, it gives us the abundant supernatural life of God which sustains us for all eternity.
