Meditations

The Flesh and the Word He who eats me will live because of me. John 6.57 We eat the body of Jesus Christ, but His Spirit is what gives us life. As He Himself said, the flesh is of no avail. The flesh is united to the Word in such a way that St. John was not afraid to say, the Word became flesh. Yet God joined the flesh and the Word for the sole purpose of communicating His Spirit to us in a way that we are better able to touch and feel. By so doing, He reaches down and becomes one with us in the flesh. He gives us His flesh to eat only to make us one body with Him, and to bring our souls to life with His divine life. So why is it that we, who so often obtain life from Him, refuse to live for Him? What becomes of that bread from heaven, that holy divine flesh? What purpose does our receiving communion serve? Does Jesus Christ live inside us? Do His thoughts and actions show forth in our human flesh? Are we growing in Jesus Christ because of our feeding on Him? How shameful it is that we are always searching for pleasure, always grumbling at the slightest suffering, always crawling around searching for comfort in the most miserable of places, always hiding our faults without correcting them, while at the same time we have been joined into one flesh with Jesus Christ Himself?