GOSPEL POWER |APRIL 22, 2021

THURSDAY | 3rd Week of Easter| Gospel: Jn 6: 44 – 51

Jesus said to the crowd, “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

REFLECTION

“Eating” is a figurative way of saying “to have faith.”  Genuine faith does not require a full mental grasp of  the things revealed. Rather, it grows out of a relationshipof-trust with the One sent to reveal. This is the whole point of Jesus’  invitation to eat the living bread from heaven. But this is precisely  where his conversation with his fellow Jews get stuck. They want  Jesus to reduce the mystery he reveals to the size that can fit into their  narrow mindset. Instead, Jesus tries to move them beyond the mind (Greek metanoia) to the immense space of the divine reality where  their relationship with God will be their only source of certainty. True  faith cannot be born unless we are willing to let go of old and false  securities so that the Spirit can lead us to what is new and genuine.

PRAYER

Lord Jesus, do not let our narrow-mindedness confine us to a pseudo