Bread of life? Incredible!
By Fr. Roy Cimagala
Chaplain
Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)
Talamban, Cebu City
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
WE cannot deny that we too can somehow share the disbelief of the Jews when
Christ declared himself as the “Bread of Life.” We can echo in ourselves their reaction:
“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (cfr. Jn 6,51-58)
It is once again the time to enliven our faith, suspend for a while our human
perception of things and allow Christ to tell us things, since he truly tells us nothing
other than the ultimate truths that can go over and above what we, with our human and
natural powers, can only perceive and comprehend.
We have to realize that in spite of our best efforts to know and understand things,
we know that we cannot apprehend everything, much less understand things fully and
with finality. And yet we somehow can discern that the reality that governs us goes
beyond what we can perceive and understand.
That is simply because of the spiritual character of our nature that would
somehow enable us to have at least an inkling, an intimation of the spiritual, let alone,
supernatural realities. These are realities that go beyond the sensible world. More than
that, these are realities that are poised to make us enter into the supernatural realities
since we know we have to contend with mysteries.
This is where and when we have to rely on faith, a gift given to us by God our
Creator who wants us to be his image and likeness and, therefore, wants to share his
knowledge of things, at least some part of it, with us.
And as the Catechism teaches us, “what moves us to believe is not the fact that
revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we
believe ‘because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither
deceive nor be deceived’”. (CCC 156)
So, in spite of the tremendous and incredible truth told to us by Christ, we just
have to believe that he makes himself the Bread of Life so that he can consummate his
mission of redeeming us and of making us like him who is the true image and likeness
that God has of his own self.
Yes, we have to reiterate this fundamental truth about ourselves. We are meant
to be another Christ (alter Christus), if not Christ himself (ipse Christus). We have to
pound this truth of our faith into our mind and heart repeatedly and strongly.
It would be truly good if on our part we try to do our best to correspond to this
truth of our faith. Christ so wants us to be like him that he makes himself a bread for us
to eat so we can achieve not only a spiritual identification with him but also a material
one, at least for a time as we still traverse this world of ours.
What the gospel of Christ as our Bread of Life tries to tell us is that we should try
our best to develop a Eucharistic devotion that would lead us to become truly
Eucharistic souls. In other words, it is telling us to be another Christ, Christ himself, the
very pattern of our humanity, and the savior of our damaged humanity.
It’s incredible indeed! But that is just how it is. With faith, we can hack it.