I am the bread of life Eucharist

Bread of life

"It is the heart and summit of the life of the Church" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1407). It is called the Most Holy Sacrament, the "Sacrament of sacraments" because it is the specific end of all the others (St. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica. III, 65, 3) and because in it "is contained all the spiritual good of the Church, that is, Christ himself, our Pasch".
(Presbyterorum ordinis, N. 5).

From the beginning of his pontificate, John Paul II constantly reaffirmed the truth of the centrality of the Eucharist in the life of the Church: "We cannot, even for a moment, forget that the Eucharist is a special good of the whole Church. It is the greatest gift that, in the order of grace and Sacrament, the divine Spouse has offered and offers unceasingly to his Bride. And precisely because it is such a gift, we must all, in a spirit of profound faith, allow ourselves to be guided by the sense of a truly Christian responsibility. A gift obliges us ever more deeply because it speaks to us not so much with the force of a strict right, as with the force of personal trust, and thus - without legal obligations - demands trust and gratitude. The Eucharist is precisely such a gift, it is such a good. We must remain faithful in detail to what it expresses in itself and to what it asks of us, that is, thanksgiving."
(Letter Dominicae Cenae).

To give thanks means to show oneself happy with the gift received, to realize that it is an expression of a particular love, to recognize its greatness, its beauty, its preciousness. The more deeply one understands the reasons that inspired the gift, the more vivid, full and sincere the thanks flow.

Gift, acceptance, gratitude, re-cognition, call to awareness. It is not a given to penetrate the depths of the mystery. Why then the Eucharist? Why does Christ offer himself to us as food and drink? Why did he enjoin the apostles to "do the Eucharist in memory of Him"? Is it really so important to repeat his gestures and words, to celebrate the "memorial" of his life, death, resurrection and intercession with the Father?

Wasn't the simple memory of Him and what he did enough?
Why has the Church always remained faithful to the command of the Lord Jesus since the dawn of time? The Acts of the Apostles testify that the members of the primitive community of Jerusalem "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers... Every day they frequented the temple together and broke bread at home, and took their meals with gladness and simplicity of heart".
(Acts 2:42.46).

«Especially on "the first day of the week", that is, Sunday, the day of Jesus' Resurrection, Christians gathered "to break bread" (Acts 20:7). From those times the celebration of the Eucharist has continued to this day, so that today we find it everywhere in the Church, with the same fundamental structure. It remains the center of the life of the Church».
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, IL 1343).

Why all this? Why the gift of bread from heaven? Simply so that we can live: live spiritually, live within, live in grace, live in holiness. Let us leave the word to the holy Capuchin of Pietrelcina who during his stay in Venafro fed only on the Eucharist. He said: "How could I live without approaching to receive Jesus for just one morning? I am so hungry and thirsty before receiving him, that I almost faint."

To a spiritual daughter he wrote: "The Holy Eucharist is the greatest of miracles; it is the ultimate and greatest sign of Jesus' love for us and he has done all this to give us a full, abundant, perfect life. This is what he gives us every day even more in Holy Communion. Let us therefore preserve with greater jealousy the precious deposit of true faith in this sacrament, let us recognize with an ever greater sense of gratitude the immense benefit of God's goodness, let us love with greater transport this God of love, let us perform with greater diligence all the holy works to please this God made man, to enjoy the fruit here on earth and obtain a richer reward in heaven".
(Padre Pio, Dolcissimo Iddio, 41 unpublished letters to the beloved spiritual daughter, pp, 89-90).

He often repeated: "it is easier for the world to stand without the sun than without the Mass" (N. Castello - A. Negrisolo, il beato Padre Pio, Miracolo eucaristico, p. 28). The Eucharist is not always expected, strongly desired, well prepared, thanked, remembered, assimilated, lived. Therefore it does not bear fruit in us except partially. Let us therefore convince ourselves of the absolute necessity of Christ, the Bread of Life, to live a generous and convinced Christian life, to rise to the perfection of charity.

Just as daily bread is indispensable for existing, moving, fulfilling our duties and not getting sick, so at a deeper level we cannot do without the Bread of Life (cf. Jn 6:48) under penalty of losing precious spiritual energy, the lack of impetus for good, living with difficulty in grace, progressive interior weakening, giving in to the allurements of evil. "What material food produces in our physical life, Communion wonderfully accomplishes in our spiritual life. Communion in the Flesh of the Risen Christ, "vivified by the Holy Spirit and life-giving," preserves, increases, and renews the life of grace received in Baptism. The growth of Christian life needs to be nourished by Eucharistic Communion, the bread of our pilgrimage, until the moment of death, when it will be given to us as viaticum."
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1392).

Created in the image of God, we are all made to grow in virtue, grace and holiness, aiming even at the perfection of the Father (cf. Mt 5:48), "until we all reach... the state of the perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ".
(Eph 4:13).

The Eucharist is the "Holy One of God" (Jn 6:69) who gives himself to work our sanctification, to conform us to the divine will, to make us living gospels, to make us assimilate his thoughts, to win us to his ideals, to fill us with his love and launch us into giving ourselves to others to the point of sacrificing ourselves. From communion with the body and blood of Christ, from this mystical vital fusion, derive so many actual graces, as to make it possible to climb to the highest peaks of evangelical holiness.

"Tasting the Eucharistic Sacrament, the soul is inflamed with such ardor that, having destroyed all lukewarmness and all carnality, it unites itself only to this food, converting itself into it and then tastes that the Lord is sweet, experiences how his spirit is sweeter than honey, and perceives sensibly how great is the sweetness that is hidden in this Sacrament of love."
(St. Bonaventure, Discourses, III Sunday after Pentecost, n. 1).

Eucharist and holiness: fire and flame, inseparably. Whoever lets himself be set on fire, burns with holiness, emanates flashes of vivid light, a burning heat.

The Eucharist "divinizes" because it increases and nourishes in us the divine, Trinitarian life, the love and communion of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The Eucharist "Christifies", makes us similar to Jesus because it unites us intimately to Him. Saint Augustine gives voice to the Lord for us: "You will not change me into you, as the food of your flesh, but you will be transformed into me" (Confessions, VII, 10, 16).
"Participation in the body and blood of Christ does nothing other than change us into what we take" (Saint Leo the Great, Discourse, 63, 7). "The proper effect of the Eucharist is the transformation of man into Christ" (St. Thomas Aquinas, On Book IV of the Sentences, d. 12, q. 2, a. 1).

The Eucharist makes Jesus live in us and we in him, in a kind of symbiosis and mutual immanence: "You become concorporeal and consanguineous with Christ... when his body and blood are poured out in your members" (St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catechesis, 4, 3).

The Eucharist realizes man's dream: to be one with God; and at the same time it fulfills God's dream: to become one life with man in love.

«The Greek Fathers conceived the Eucharist as a mystery (mystérion) or as an initiation into divine life. We celebrate the life of Jesus, his incarnation, his miracles, his death and his resurrection and, in this celebration, we become participants in his divine life that defeated death. Our life is in a certain sense incorporated into his divine essence. This fact gave the first Christians the certainty that their existence would have a good outcome, exactly as the life of Jesus had, despite having passed through the cross. At every Eucharistic celebration the experience of the first Christians was that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ: death no longer has power over us. We are associated with the path of Jesus and this path also leads us towards true life, towards the fullness of life that is distinguished by complete joy and total love.

The Latin term mysterium, incomprehensible to many today, could be interpreted as God's dream about man. It is not only we who have dreams in our lives, but God also had a dream about man: and this dream became reality in his Son, Jesus Christ, in whom God's goodness and friendship towards men were manifested (cf. Tit 3:4).. In Christ the image of man was manifested as God dreamed it, and it is the image of a person who is one with God, permeated by his goodness and his love. The Eucharistic rites represent the mystery of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God's dream about us men: that we become one with Him. Precisely in the different rites that play on the mixture (for example: the water poured into the wine and the bread dipped in it), the fact is expressed that we, like Jesus, become one with God... without any distinction being able to be made any more».
(A- Griin, The Eucharist, Transforming and Becoming One, pp. 45-47).