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(Photo©Michael Seagriff)
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God will test us during the course of life with a variety of challenges, all of which are intended to strengthen our belief in and resolve to follow Him. We need to embrace these challenges if we are to grow spiritually and closer to Him. These challenges and the gift of the Eucharist should be a constant reminder of His love for us and of our obligation to love and trust Him in return.
It is not bread and wine we eat and drink but the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ! We should approach and respond to Him with a mindset and in a fashion deserving of such great a gift.
It is understandable why so many were repulsed and walked away from Our Lord after He told them that they had to eat His Body and drink His Blood if they wished to have eternal life. It made no sense. Cannibalism was not a concept easily embraced by anyone. Jews weren’t even permitted to drink the blood of slaughtered animals. Even if one was inclined to do as Jesus commanded, how does one go about eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a living human being? The Apostles had no greater understanding at the time of what Jesus said than those who left Him. But they (save Judas) stayed. When asked if they also would leave Him, Peter replied, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.” As St. Thomas Aquinas advises, we are to accept what Jesus says in faith even when we can not understand it, praying that at some time He will give us the understanding we lack. In the meanwhile, we are to live by faith, trusting Him with our eternal well-being.
The Eucharist is such a great gift! How tragic it is that so many to whom it has been given, no longer participate in it, don’t believe it is the Body and Blood of their Lord and Savior, or receive Him unworthily.
We and our world would be totally different if we but believed!
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