‘Whoever Eats This Bread Will Live Forever’

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

AS we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, we are reminded that Christ has given us everything for us to be what God wants us to be. Christ is the living bread, and he offers it to us freely and abundantly. He offers us all the means so we can handle all the conditions and situations of our life here on earth, both the good ones and the bad ones, properly, i.e., in a way that would lead us to our eternal life.

We need to enliven our belief that in Christ we have everything, we have what is truly and ultimately needed by us. Many of our needs are passing, are of a temporal nature. It is Christ who we truly and ultimately need.

And he gives himself to us so completely as to make himself bread to be eaten by us. Although he is like air since we cannot truly live without him, he compares and makes himself bread, because unlike air, he as bread has to be deliberately sought.

This duty of seeking him is what we have to be more aware of. In the Gospel itself, we hear our Lord saying, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” (Mt 6,33)

We have to learn to subordinate our earthly and temporal concerns and plans to the task of seeking Christ. We have to be wary of being influenced mainly if not solely by the standards of practicality, convenience and other worldly values. That’s our problem. God is often left behind in the play of our competing interests.

As our Lord said: “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?” (Mt 16,26) We should not lose the spiritual and supernatural character of our life, and do everything to keep ourselves from being dominated by a purely worldly and temporal outlook in life.

We need to seek Christ and be close to him always. This intimacy is what we have to build up and maintain. Thus, we have to learn to make seeking Christ a permanent attitude and disposition in our life. Whatever we may be doing, whatever situation we may find ourselves in, let us always seek Christ.

Our Lord himself tells us to seek him with insistence. “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you…” (Lk 11,9) We have to understand that to lead a truly upright and moral life, we need to be existentially close with Christ.

And Christ is actually very close to us. He is actually very accessible to us. He does not play hard to get. He is at the very core of our being, because he is the main cause of our existence. Besides, his overpowering love for us is what makes him truly close to us. It’s us rather who tend to ignore him.

We have to understand that our moral life does not depend so much on our knowledge of moral principles as on our living relationship with God. It’s this intimate relationship with God that would effectively guide us as to how to think, speak and act. It’s this relationship that would enable us to live charity all the time in spite of difficulties.

This intimacy is attained when we develop this Eucharistic mind frame, that abiding belief based on Christ’s teaching, that in the Eucharist we have the real presence of Christ and, in fact, the very bread of life, the bread that gives us the true, ultimate life, and not just biological, physical and material life.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com