Day: April 20, 2018

One Minute Reflection – 20 April – Friday of the Third Week of Eastertide

So Jesus said to them, “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.   For my flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed.”...John 6:53-55

REFLECTION – “About these words I observe, first, that they evidently declare on the face of them some very great mystery.   How can they be otherwise taken?   If they do not, they must be a figurative way of declaring something which is not mysterious but plain and intelligible.   But is it conceivable, that He who is the Truth and Love itself, should have used difficult words, when plain words would do?   Why should He have used words, the sole effect of which, in that case, would be to perplex, to startle us needlessly?   Does His mercy delight in creating difficulties?   Does He put stumbling-blocks in our way without cause?   Does He excite hopes and then disappoint them?   It is possible;  He may have some deep purpose in so doing but which is more likely, that His meaning is beyond us, or His words beyond His meaning?
All who read such awful words as those in question will be led by the first impression of them, either with the disciples to go back, as at a hard saying, or with St Peter to welcome what is promised:  they will be excited in one way or the other, with incredulous surprise or with believing hope?   And are the feelings of these opposite witnesses, discordant indeed, yet all of them deep, after all unfounded?   Are they to go for nothing?   Are they no token of our Saviour’s real meaning?   This desire and again this aversion, so naturally raised, are they without a real object and the mere consequence of a general mistake on all hands, of what Christ meant as imagery, for literal truth?   Surely this is very improbable!”…Blessed John Henry Newman (1801-1890)

PRAYER – Lord God, source of our freedom and our salvation, listen to our humble prayer.   We stand with St Peter and welcome what our divine Saviour, Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ has promised.   Help us to grow in love and faith at each Holy Sacrifice we attend.   Help us to accept with total commitment this great Mystery and as He gives Himself to and for us, help us to give ourselves to and for the glory of Your Kingdom. Through our Lord Jesus, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever, amen.  Peter, the spokesman for the apostles, proclaims, “Lord, to whom shall we go?   You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (Jn 6:67-69).