Thursday of the
Third Week of Easter
(Acts 8:26-40; John 6:44-51)
“I shall not live until I have seen God, and when I have
seen him, I shall never die.” The seventeenth
century mystic John Donne wrote these words to profess not only his belief in the
resurrection of the dead but also his wariness about earthly life. Here, he goes on to say, we see but
appearances; in seeing God we will know all things as they truly are. In today’s gospel Jesus draws a similar
distinction between the manna which the ancestors of the Jews ate in the desert
and the true bread of life.
The Jews seek sustenance.
They tire from getting up every day to perform back-breaking work just to
put bread on the table. They remember
the story of the Israelites being fed with manna and see in Jesus a comparable
source of food. Of course, Jesus knows
that they chiefly desire to satisfy their hunger so he challenges them to see
all food as only a sign of what gives eternal sustenance. You have to eat my Flesh, he says, to really have
your eternal needs met. He means that
they have to believe in him – to accept that he has come from God and to love
each other.
We come to receive the Eucharist. When it is offered to us, we say, “Amen,” I
believe. We must understand that we are
committing ourselves to him. We believe
that he is God and that heeding his command to love – not just in words but with
deeds – will lead us beyond our wants into eternal life.
