Thursday, 04 May 2017
3rd Week of Easter
1st Reading: Acts 8:26–40
Gospel: Jn 6:44–51
Jesus said to the crowds, “No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise him up on the last day. It has been written in the Prophets: They shall all be taught by God.
So whoever listens and learns from the Father comes to me. “For no one has seen the Father except the One who comes from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.
“I am the bread of life. Though your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, they died. But here you have the bread which comes from heaven so that you may eat of it and not die. “I am the living bread which has come from heaven; whoever eats of this bread will live forever. The bread I shall give is my flesh and I will give it for the life of the world.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
“Eat and drink today, and drown your sorrow; you shall perhaps not do it tomorrow. Best while you have it, use your breath; there is no drinking after death” (Adapted from John Fletcher, et al in “The Bloody Brother”). If life is that short, is it worth all the effort to work hard for food to nourish it? Yes it is, for life albeit short is sacred and ordained by God for a mission. We must nourish it and nurture it.
If vegetal life is worth all the hard work to nurture and nourish, what could be said of spiritual life? It should deserve more because it is meant for eternity. In the Sacraments we find proper nourishment for the soul. They strengthen our will power to say no to temptations and so avoid making temporal life a great embarrassment to the soul. At the same time, the grace derived from these sacraments keep our soul healthy, making it fit for entry to eternity.
We can draw comparisons between the effect of perishable food to the body and the supposed effect of spiritual food to our soul. Ludwig Feuerbach has exaggerated the unity of ingested food and the body when he wrote that man is what he eats (“Der Mann ist was er isst”). It’s an exaggeration of a reality we all recognize as part of human experience. When we eat healthy foods, for example, we are at the pink of health. But when we eat pork frequently, we feel as lazy as the pigs we roast and eat voraciously.
Feuerbach’s exaggeration becomes the ideal at the spiritual level. We should become what we eat at our Eucharistic tables. If the challenge is well taken, we become more loving, thoughtful and forgiving.
In heaven the union of food and soul attains perfection. As we look forward to it, let us work as hard for the soul as we do for the body. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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