By Fr. Ed Lipton, SDB<\/p>\n\n\n\n
St. John\u2019s Gospel,\u00a0Jn 6<\/em>, led off with one of the seven\u00a0great\u00a0signs used by John to repeat the teachings of Jesus. He now reaches a critical point where Jesus said, \u201cI am the living bread WHO descended from heaven. If anyone EATS from this bread, he shall live in eternity. And the bread that I will give is MY Flesh for the life of the world\u201d\u00a0(Jn 6:51-52).\u00a0<\/em>Jesus equated Himself to this bread, thus comparing Himself to the God given manna. But he made a tremendous leap:\u00a0\u201cThis bread that I WILL Give is MY FLESH.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>We Catholics and the Orthodox have held\u00a0from the beginning\u00a0that this was not a mere figure of speech.\u00a0It stated a reality. His\u00a0\u201cI will give,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0then stated, was made present at the Last Supper as\u00a0<\/em>Jesus said, \u201cThis<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>IS<\/u>\u00a0my Body; this\u00a0IS<\/u>\u00a0my Blood.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We meditate on that reality, for it is essential to our Catholic faith. When we celebrate Mass, we do celebrate in an unbloody manner the life-giving sacrifice of Christ. He becomes present for us on the altar, present in his body and blood, soul, and divinity when we receive him in the Eucharist. By concentrating on this mystery, our Church, as did Jesus, insists that we believe in His unique presence in the consecrated Bread and Wine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hear again the revealed truth\u00a0spoken by Jesus the Lord: \u201cFor the bread of God IS HE who descends from heaven and is given to the world\u201d\u00a0((Jn 6:33).\u00a0\u2026 \u201cI am the bread of life\u201d\u00a0(46),\u00a0<\/em>Then that astounding leap: \u201dFor my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink\u201d\u00a0(Jn 6:56)<\/em>.\u00a0We Catholics accept this proclamation of Christ literally. That is our\u00a0Faith.<\/em>\u00a0Jesus went on to proclaim that partaking of Him we are guaranteed eternal life. That is our\u00a0Hope<\/em>. \u201cJust as the living Father has sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so also whoever eats Me, the same shall live because of Me. (Jn6:58).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n How comforting! How great the privilege, that already on this earth Jesus invites us to partake of His living Being.\u00a0 How great our striving should be to pay due respect to our God when receiving the Living Bread, no longer bread. It is Christ, the living Lord, who, in His omnipotence, has taken on the form of Bread. We adore Him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLet my soul glory in the LORD.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (Resp. Ps 34:3)<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Fr. Ed Lipton, SDB St. John\u2019s Gospel,\u00a0Jn 6, led off with one of the seven\u00a0great\u00a0signs used by John to repeat the teachings of Jesus. He now reaches a critical point where Jesus said, \u201cI am the living bread WHO descended from heaven. If anyone EATS from this bread, he shall live in eternity. And the bread that I will give is MY Flesh for … Continuar leyendo Jesus and We Insist<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":10336596,"featured_media":12751,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[777629889,2343517,20310044,782003447,516714022],"tags":[782003455],"class_list":["post-14277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fr-ed-liptak","category-gospel-reflection","category-province-news","category-rector-major","category-salesian-world-news","tag-fr-ed-liptak"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/salesianbulletin.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/intouch-scripture-graphic-600.jpg?fit=600%2C510&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p59ePG-3Ih","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10336596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14277"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14367,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14277\/revisions\/14367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salesianbulletin.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}