The Bread of Life discourse part 3

This Sunday is the twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time and literally the third Sunday talking about the Bread of Life Discourse in the Gospel of St. John the Evangelist, which can be found in John 6:51-56. There is no doubt that the Catholic Church teaches us about the theology of St. John about the Bread of Life Discourse, which began last July 29 with the feeding of the 5,000 or the multiplication of the loaves.

A week later we began the first discussion on the Bread of Life discourse which came to us last August 6, then the second part of that discussion on August 12. So today we have our third and final discussion on the Bread of Life discourse so that we Catholics would never doubt that our Lord Jesus Christ truly meant for us to eat his body and drink his blood for they are truly our spiritual food to nourish our souls in preparation for the most important journey in our lives; life eternal in the presence of God. So let just read John 6: 51-56.

“51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.”

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Let me tell you again that during my discussion with our separated brethren, they do not take the Word of our Lord Jesus Christ literally when he said “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Indeed many Christian sects interpret these sayings of our Lord metaphorically or symbolically. This is because they do not believe that our Lord Jesus Christ is truly present, his body, blood, soul and divinity in the Holy Eucharist.

The difference between the Catholic Church and the rest of Christianity is the belief in the real presence of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist. Just as our bodies require food and drink for physical nourishment and growth, so for nourishment and growth our souls need “soul food” and this is what the Holy Eucharist gives to us every time we go to Mass. Just to remind our readers, during the Last Supper, our Lord told his Apostles: “This is my body” and offered the wine to drink and said: “This is my blood.” Thus ordinary bread by the process of transfiguration turned into the body of our Lord Jesus Christ and the wine being offered is turned into this blood for the life of the world.

Never mind what the other Christian sects teach because they do not belong to the Catholic Church. However, I would like to inform our readers that too many Catholics do not seriously believe in the real presence of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist.

Many of our Catholic brethren merely go to Church on Sundays because their parents did this for the sake of the family without a real teaching of the importance of the Mass in our lives.

Just to inform you, I strongly believe that devout Catholics go inside the Church in total and complete reverence to the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Tabernacle.

This can be found when the faithful take the Holy Communion using only their tongues but for many they hold the Holy Eucharist in the palm of their hands, which gives us an idea of their reverence to the Holy Eucharist. Hence, I exhort our readers to show their complete reverence to our Lord Jesus Christ by taking the Holy Eucharist only through their tongues as a sign of total reverence to the Lord.

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