Heavenly bread for the journey…

By Fr Jesse Maingot OP

This week in our 33-day journey, we reflected a lot about life being a pilgrimage to Heaven. I would like to quote an event in the life of the great prophet Elijah: “And the angel of the Lord came again a second time, and touched him, and said, “Arise and eat, else the journey will be too great for you” (1 Kings 19:7). These words of the angel to Elijah are true for all of us in our pilgrimage journey to Heaven. The journey is a tremendous spiritual endeavour. We need divine assistance to make this journey.

Just as Elijah needed bread for his great journey we too need “bread” to reach Heaven. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn 6:53–54).

When the Israelites sojourned for 40 years in the wilderness, God gave them manna as “bread from Heaven” to sustain them on their journey to the promised land.

Already this bread from Heaven was a prophecy of the true bread from Heaven, the Holy Eucharist. The pilgrim Church feeds on the Eucharist to be able to be strong to reach Heaven, the true promised land.

However, unlike the manna of old, God does not want to feed the Church with anything but His very self. The Eucharist is God as our food. As Catholics, we believe that after the consecration of bread and wine on the altar, the Eucharist becomes truly the God-Man, Jesus Christ. Therefore, we meet, eat, and adore not a ‘thing’ or an ‘it’ or even some container of divine presence. We meet, eat, and adore a divine person, Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.

Why is the Eucharist so necessary for the journey to Heaven? An answer to this question brings us to the principal fruit of Holy Communion. When we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, He transforms us more into Himself. He increases the divine life in us.

To be a Christian is not only to imitate Jesus. Christianity is far more mysterious than that. To be baptised into Jesus means Jesus actually lives in us. He lives and acts through us. Christ is the life of the baptised soul. What is amazing is this life is not static, it is subject to growth and spiritual development.

The source by which our growth in Christ is most powerfully effected is the Eucharist. The saints tell us that every time we partake of Holy Mass and receive Jesus we are truly changed for eternity. What we do on earth echoes into eternity. Our 33-day journey will help us deepen our thirst for the true Bread of Life.

If you have a Eucharistic testimony of the encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist, please email us to build the faith of others—eucharist@catholictt.org