Jesus often talks about how it is important to understand Him as the Bread of Life. What does this really mean? Having just celebrated this past week gone, the Feast of Corpus Christi (the Most Holy Body & Blood of Our Lord), I have spent some time in reflection on what in actuality this feast is all about and why a robust and enduring relationship with Our Eucharistic Lord really matters.

It occurred to me that since God created all things through Christ and that by Him, God is in and throughout all things and that in Him, in Christ, God holds all things together, this is really saying that the interconnectedness of everything in Christ matters a great deal to God. St Paul talks at length in Colossians Ch. 1 about how this interconnectedness in and through God’s only begotten is meant to hold the entire universe together, and indeed it does, by virtue of the complex yet astoundingly simple interworking between Natural Law and Divine Grace. And this is the reason why Jesus is so adamant that we remain
in Him. He insists on the prime importance of our abiding in Him since without Him, we are nothing. And if we really think about it in light of the interconnectedness of everything in and through Him, then this makes a great deal of sense. For, the more we endeavour to keep not just barely alive but instead vigorously sustained, the nature of our abiding in Him, the less likely we are just to float off aimlessly into the outerreaches like bits of cosmic debris – for the latter is to our detriment since we were not created to be space drifters. We were created to discover the ultimate purpose of our being created by God, and that is towards the re-forming of our ultimate union with Him. Because the Fall from Grace, as instigated by our first parents did many things to sever that union, a major part of our co-responsibility with God in the restoration of our wholeness in the sacred order of creation is this re-forming of that union, which had been broken in and through the Original Sin. Sure enough, Jesus built the Bridge for us through His atonement on Calvary. But we must conscientiously cross this Bridge from the old life of our fallen manhood or humanity to the new life in Christ of our restored manhood or humanity. And this crossing of the Bridge of life is fraught with many challenges as there is an Enemy – the cosmic Adversary of life and of our souls – who wants to curtail our journey from the Fallen life to the Renewed life. Hence, the crossing of this Bridge or the outworking of our salvation is comprised of a spiritual battle. And this spiritual battle is precisely why too, Jesus urges us most ardently, to abide in Him. For this protects us from the most perilous advances of the Adversary. For contrary to what the dictates of our Fallen nature tell us, God knows our self-sufficiency can never save us and is for the most part, our own worst enemy – for this is the part of us that can tell us those little lies about how we have no real need for God, and that we can so easily ‘do it on our own’ without the need for any help from Above. Afterall, we have vested interests, and to achieve these, we are also laden with an abundance of abilities and ingenuity, are we not? Sure – but for the most part, it’s the World that will try and convince us that we are better off just going our own way. But in and through all of that is where the catch, the snare lies, lurks, waiting in the shadows, for us to ‘merrily’ wander off into the outerreaches. And before we know it, we’ve arrived in a very abject place. All the while we were convinced to the utmost we knew very well what we were doing. I can’t get over that scene in the Lion King where the two youngins, captivated by an outlandish curiosity to venture out into the big wide world yonder, fail to heed their father’s advice not to venture into the Bad Lands – which is a place that was desolate, forsaken and inhabited by jackals and the two youngins’ own profligate uncle along with his band of roguish rag-tag brigands. And what ends up happening is that the two big kittens get lost in this terrible place. To cut a long story short, they do end up getting rescued but their ordeal leaves much to be desired. And like the Prodigal Son, God knows what we are like – our adventurous spirit is sometimes co-mingled with the wrong circumstances due to lack of sound judgement and a mighty dose of spiritual immaturity to go with it. And these are the parts of our journey the Adversary preys upon as he sees and studies most diligently, our weaknesses. That said, the main reason for Jesus eanestly inviting us to continue abiding in Him is so that 1. we can further ourselves along the way to re-forming our union with Him, and 2. so that we avoid the pitfalls of getting in too-deep with those places and life-ways that hinder our ability to steadfastly continue on making our way towards most fully re-forming our union with God.

And so, we are challenged in the deepest places of our nature, of who we are. When Jesus tells us that He is the Bread of Life, and that His flesh is real food indeed and His blood, real drink, we are challenged. Why? Because not only does this assertion by Jesus sound “radical”, it challenges us from surface down. Sure, we will not concede to luridness when it comes to partaking of our food as wild animals appear to do. But in actual fact, Jesus wants to show us something deeper about the mystery of how all things are connected and how all things are made. And as regards wild animals, what we see of how they eat may very well only be the veneer which we, in our Fallen state, are allowed to see. Since the consequences of the Fall from Grace produced not only distortion in the way things are experienced generally, but also our vision in some areas is veiled so that we only see a certain version of events playing out. What the wild animals see when they catch their meals though could be very different from how we see what they are doing. We cannot know this for sure but we can to a certain degree get a sense that a kind of veiled mystery shields us while in the labrynth of our mortal coil as to what is actually playing out. That’s not to say that we are always deceived by our senses but it tells us that there is a part of our awareness that is allowed to remain deliberately concealled from our view. And while that is in part the result of Original Sin, God has also allowed this to remain in the context of our lived experience for the sake of our learning. He wants us to learn how to transform ourselves and this includes our five senses into liberated or renewed versions – versions that are no longer as subject to the crudity of the Fallen nature, and versions at that which abide in Christ. And the only way to do this is by remaining assuredly anchored in a living, loving relationship with Jesus’ Body – I find the most meaningful way to cultivate such a relationship is through a robust and enduring devotion to His most Sacred Humanity. This is how I connect deepest with forging my way in crossing the Bridge. Everyone is different, and for others, they will find a totally different but hopefully equally meaningful way of cultivating their relationship with Christ’s Body, Jesus Himself, the Corpus Christi.

It is also important to remember that Jesus wanted us to understand that there are ineffible depths in this profound interconnectedness of all things through Him, with Him, and in Him, as extolled by Colossians 1 : 17.  It is why life itself is so sacred and why Catholics regard abortion with disdain. For Jesus said we must abide in Him by partaking of His Body and Blood just like a child in the womb has life only because it is nourished and supported by partaking of the body and blood of its mother, for without that sustenance, the knitting together in the mother’s womb spoken of by the prophet Jeremiah would not be possible. It is this “holding together” that makes life possible. Jesus is like a mother to us in this way and He gives us His own mother Mary to demonstrate the efficaciousness of her Divine maternity, her universal motherhood to man and to all of creation. But Jesus also, by extension of His own marvelous love for us embraces us in a way that hints at the inseperability between the maternal and paternal nature of God. Although tradition bids that we refer to God as “He”, God is not only “He”, He is ALL of His constituent makeup – both masculine and feminine because He preconfigured all these elements and nothing exists that was not fashioned in, through, and by Him.

And further, it must be noted that, contrary to how it is sometimes thought of, it is not a ‘cannibalistic or bloodthirsty’ way of beholding spiritual sustenance, in spite of the very direct and bold way it reads.  Rather the notion of imbibing Jesus’ Body and Blood is a sacred euphemism of how the nature of life, the interweaving of it by its substance is enmeshed or held together. If the building-blocks of life are disengaged, and most particularly, if they are disengaged from the Cornerstone, then life is finished. This is again why, Jesus being the Cornerstone said that without Me, you can do nothing. Therefore, to truly have life in us, we must join our (existential) substance with His. His substantial building blocks ensure our survival just as air is required for us to be able to breathe. His Bodily substance, that is, the spiritual make-up of Who He is, is vital for sustaining life as it is meant to be lived.