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“I Am the Bread of Life”
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Sacred history, written by God’s hand, always goes beyond the understanding of those who are living its different stages. Every time, its rebounds or new developments, be they real or apparent, have the effect of replacing man, the chosen people, the whole of humanity in a more accurate and right perspective of its reality before God. It could be said that, each one of us, just like the chosen people, is living his own sacred history, at times more holy, more virtuous, more full of audacity and courage to fight the enemy and reaffirm the primacy of God in our lives. At times, it is less holy, filled with betrayals, cowardliness and the setbacks or failures of our personal sins and the sins of those around us. And yet, we must understand that the sanctity of history does not come from men, does not come from us, does not even come from our most sublime upsurges of love of the moment. It is God through His plan of love for us, individually and then collectively, ecclesially, who makes our history “holy”. He is the one who wrote it, from all eternity, with His accents of infinite Love, given that His Being is Love. He wrote it historically through the most powerful acts of salvation, separating the waters or annihilating the enemy. He also manifested Himself in the light breeze or in the manna and the quails given in abundance in the desert of our destitution.
History is holy because God is present there. God is guiding His people from Egypt to the Promised Land, from the sin of Adam to the coming of the Redeemer, God made man; through the manifestation of the temple of His Body, His Church, founded on Peter to lead the peoples to the Kingdom of eternal bliss:“You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18); through the manna covering the ground like a light dew all the way to the giving of His Body, “the real Bread come down from Heaven” which became Eucharist on the evening of the last meal with His disciples – “Do this in memory of me” –, God is present at the very center of the world and of history.
History is holy by the presence of God. God is there, in our midst, no longer solely in the signs and grand actions of the first Covenant, but through a personal presence in His Son who came to take on the flesh of man in order to save sinful man and give him back his dignity as a son.
History is holy, for God, in His Son, walked along our roads, taught in our squares, purified the lepers, the tax collectors and the sinners whom our societies of rightthinking people rejected, in order to make of them disciples, apostles, holy men and women who today are models for us, encouraging us to follow Christ and respond to His call.
History is holy through the permanent presence of Jesus on earth in His Eucharist. He made of our earth the altar of His sacrifice; of His Church, the monstrance holding up its Redeemer to the adoration of all the peoples; of the hearts of the souls that welcome Him, His tabernacle in which He finds all His delights.
History is holy. It is the history of the Covenant He established by His Blood shed on the cross to purify us, to uplift us to Him, to make of our own crosses a royal way associating us with His redemptive sacrifice, a springboard to raise us all the way to the world of the Divinity.
The history of our world made up of sinners is holy of the holiness of God who is beside us. The world of the divine is made accessible to us here below through the Eucharist. Jesus said: “I myself am the bread of life. No one who comes to me shall ever be hungry, no one who believes in me shall ever thirst.” (Jn 6:35) Divine Life, God Himself, Love and Holiness, is given us by the Redeemer’s sacrifice. He opens the gates of His Heart to us in order to give us access to the world of grace, to the very Life of God. Through His sacrifice, He gives us the hope of the Kingdom of heaven where we shall reign with Him, be one with Him, be one in Him. That will be sharing in perfect bliss, for the God of all holiness will be the glory of the elect, the unadulterated happiness in the Light of a divine Fire which is Life and Love, boundlessly and endlessly.
Now, history is holy, our terrestrial history which prepares us for this happiness in Heaven, also because the Savior wishes to have us share in this divine Life here below, on the earth of our battles, on the Golgotha of our conquests, through the triumph of His own victory. And so as to accomplish this, He has raised up, in our time, She who is opening the gates of the Terrestrial Kingdom to us.
As in the time of Jesus, it is necessary that we recognize God’s Work today. “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (Jn 6:29) Two thousand years ago, it was the hour of the Son who made Himself Bread come down from Heaven to give us Life. “I solemnly assure you, it was not Moses who gave you bread from the heavens; it is my Father who gives you the real heavenly bread. God’s bread comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” (Jn 6:32-33) And the Redeemer, through His presence along our paths, and then through His real and sacramental presence in the Eucharist of our Masses and our tabernacles, has sanctified the ground He walked on so that we might ascend to Him who now sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven.
And it is now the hour of the Daughter of the Father, with the Handmaid following the same path as Christ so as to relive all the sufferings of His Passion and open the gates of the Terrestrial Kingdom for us for a millennium of peace, love and light. “Of such is ‘Life of Love’: a life like other lives – externally, the same afflictions, but within, what light, and, above all, what a mystery!” (Raoul Auclair, Preface to Life of Love, vol. I, p. 13)
And now comes the time when it is here, “on earth as in heaven”, that the Kingdom of Christ the King must be established. So it is that, henceforth, through the sacrifice of the Co-Redemptrix joined to the sacrifice of the Redeemer, the Father’s will is being perfectly accomplished “on earth as in heaven” so that the man redeemed by Christ, now renewed, may not only taste the joy of heaven one day but also have access to, as of here below and for all the time of the Kingdom, the peace and happiness promised to the men and women of good will. “Glory to God, peace to men, the joy of heaven on earth!” That has become possible with the entry of the Co-Redemptrix into the Heart of the Father’s Heart. And Heaven has given us Spiri-Maria which becomes the gate to the Kingdom, the land of the Heart of the Father’s Heart, so that we may have access to the Kingdom which centuries of people have incessantly implored: “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven!”
“Now, Heaven has descended upon earth to stay there.” The work of God today, is it not still to believe in the one God has sent for our time? And this little grain of wheat lost in the Eucharist so that the Church may be renewed by her sacrifice and that men may reach the Kingdom of peace “on the land of the living” becomes for us a source of hope. We must follow the same paths, live similar self-detachments, let ourselves be purified, divinized, to the point of becoming what we have received, that is to say, “Eucharist”, an offering and a sacrifice with the Redeemer and the Co-Redemptrix, a “thanksgiving” and a host of praise to the glory of the Father who is Love.
“Acquire a fresh, spiritual way of thinking. You must put on that new man created in God’s image, whose justice and holiness are born of truth,” Saint Paul tells us. (Eph 4:23-24) Now, the gate has been opened for us and the way of this renewal set out for us by her who has received the mission of Paul by becoming a living copy of Mary. And through our gradual entry into the new world, that of the Heart of the Father’s Heart present on earth, we will be set in the Kingdom and transformed by the new Eucharist, our Bread of Life for the Kingdom.
“I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me shall ever be hungry, no one who believes in me shall ever thirst.” (Jn 6:35) Let us give thanks to God, Father of all Love, for the ineffable gift of His Eucharist. Let us receive Communion often, daily, receiving this food from Heaven on earth. By receiving the Body of the Lord, we will be transformed in Him.
Through the merits of the sacrifice of the Redeemer in union with that of the Co-Redemptrix, we will have access here below to the land of the Heart of the Father’s Heart, to the delights of God’s Love, He who came down to us. The new Eucharist, in the renewed Church of John, is preparing the time of the Kingdom when “we will be priests, we will be prophets and we will be saints”.
May we let ourselves be transformed by the life and the light of the radiant host from which there emanates a double presence: “And yet, they are two!” So it is that we will be transformed, sanctified, divinized, eucharistified in order to live only for God and of God even in this life. Thus, in all honesty, we will be able to become what we have received: a Eucharist of praise to the Father on the land of the living and for all the time of the Kingdom.
Fr. Jean-François Mastropietro, O.FF.M