John 6:54 (Eternal Life)

* Welcome God every morning before work by taking ~5 min to read this Living In Faith Exchange (LIFE) Group devotion (life-devotions.blogspot.com), which has snippets from Living Faith (http://www.livingfaith.com/).

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. John 6:54

Living Faith snippets: "The consecrated bread and wine are not only signs of love, but they are the real Sacramental presence of Jesus in our midst. Whenever we receive the consecrated host in our hand or on our tongue, and whenever we drink the consecrated wine, we are touching God. Lord, I cannot fully comprehend the mystery of your love. All I can do is open my heart to receive what you want to give." by Fr. Kenneth E. Grabner (author of "Focus Your Day")

Pat nuggets: I was especially taken by the prayer above, "Lord, I cannot fully comprehend the mystery of your love. All I can do is open my heart to receive what you want to give" (regarding the Eucharist). As we are the created, why should we expect to fully comprehend the ways of our Creator God? As a scientist and follower of Jesus, I am constantly amazed at how much our Creator allows us to understand through the gift of our mind and inspired words from the Bible and fellow Christians living as the Body of Christ. I do not expect to fully understand the Eucharist, but I do accept this Sacramental (from Christ) gift because God said, "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life within you" (John 6:53). Although it should be enough that God said to do it, we still struggle with this. The many disciples of Christ at that time also struggled with this and said, "this saying is hard; who can accept it?" (John 6:60). Jesus said, "the words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe. Many of His disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied Him [Jesus]" (John 6: 63, 64, 66). Those disciples left Christ in John "6:66," and Rich noted that perhaps Satan influenced those disciples to turn away from Christ. Would those disciples have left Jesus if the Eucharist was simply a sign of his love? While trying to pass on the gift of skiing to Grace this year, I would ski ahead of Grace and ask her to ski to me. Grace had to let go and trust that I would catch her. Once she trusted me, she received the joy of the skiing gift. When I let go of my own desire to totally understand the why and how of the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist, I can then receive God's grace through His awesome gift...Amen!

Through Christ for ProLife,
Pat
Phil 4:13

* Today's Bible readings at www.usccb.org/nab/today.shtml.
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