Fwd from Trần Kim Thục
Have you ever had to go without food for an extended period of time? It wasn’t a pleasant experience, was it? The longer we go without nourishment, the weaker we become. It feels as if our life is slowly draining from us—and in one sense, it is.
Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel make it clear that his Body and Blood are just as vital to us as food and drink are. Without the nourishment of the Eucharist, God’s life in us can slowly start to drain away.
Here’s an extreme example of how life-giving the Eucharist is. In his book He Leadeth Me, Fr. Walter Ciszek described the risks he took each day to offer Mass at the Siberian labor camp where he was imprisoned: “I would go to any length, suffer any inconvenience, run any risk to make the bread of life available to these men.”
The men worked long hours in frigid temperatures. Yet at noon, Ciszek would celebrate Mass wherever he could say it undetected, whether in a storage shack or huddled in a building foundation. “Distractions caused by the fear of discovery . . . took nothing away from the effect that the tiny bit of bread and few drops of consecrated wine produced upon the soul,” he wrote.
These prisoners were just as dependent on Jesus’ Body and Blood to keep them alive as they were on the meager food they received from their captors. The Eucharist had become their true food and true drink.
Ciszek wrote that he was “occasionally overcome with emotion . . . as I thought of how [God] had found a way to follow and to feed these lost and straying sheep in this most desolate land.” Today, may we too be filled with gratitude as we reflect on the generosity of a God who offers his life—and his very self—to us in the Eucharist.
“Jesus, thank you for the life you give me in your Body and Blood.”
Source: The Word Among Us https://wau.org/meditations/current
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