May the words that I speak be both spoken and received in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
If I was to ask you what you would consider to be a miracle, then I wonder what you would choose? (If we bear in mind that a miracle is something which happens outside of the natural order of events. In other words a miracle is a supernatural event, where the Holy Spirit reaches in and changes something.)
Any ideas? I believe that the words of Christ, as revealed in the gospel of John, clearly show to me a miracle; a supernatural event; a miracle of how ordinary bread and wine can be changed by the grace of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit to become what Christ says:
He says, “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.”
Christ did not leave his disciples when he ascended to the Father. In a mysterious way, he left us his body and blood: or more precisely, he left us the consecratory means of transforming earthly elements into his spiritual body and blood, or nature.
We do not need to explain this mystery (not that we could) or to be divided over the miracle; but Christians should be united in faith and joy over it. For it is given for our salvation and redemption.
For unless we partake by faith in consuming Christ’s nature then our own human nature will not be spiritualised into the divine nature and we will not have the life in us which Christ speaks of.
Christ says, “I am the resurrection and the life” … “I am the way, the truth and the life” … “I am the light of the world” … “I am the bread of life”.
Each one of us should expect miracles to happen in ordinary affairs of life. For God is concerned about this as well. But with the Eucharist a very supernatural event takes place.
Here then, the Lord reveals that he is the ‘Bread of Life’. Christ says, “I am the Bread of Life; he or she, who comes to me shall not hunger, and he or she, who believes in me shall never thirst. The Eucharist – that is The Thanksgiving – has been the centre of Christian life and worship throughout the ages. The bread and wine are perfect symbols of the work and life of humanity.
Before there can be bread the land must be ploughed, the seed sown, the harvest gathered in, the corn threshed and the flour baked. But we also remember that there must be the gift of God in the life of the seed, the nourishment provided by the soil, the rain and the sun.
Bread then, is an example of God’s gifts made available to people by human works, for the satisfaction of our human needs. The same is true of wine; the planting and cultivation of the wine, the gathering of the grapes, the pressing in the vats, the maturing of the juice into wine; all dependent not only on the labour and skill of people but on the natural world of soil, sun and rain.
We take the bread and the wine, which are symbols of industrial and commercial life, and we offer them back to God. Then, because we have offered them to him, he gives them back to use; not merely as food, important though that is, but also as the means of nourishing our spiritual life.
The bread of life is not to be understood as a simple feeding of the body The Bread of Life satisfies human spiritual hunger to eternity. Christ came to feed the poor in spirit and the bread which he gives is of himself.
The divine bread helps us to be more Christ-like which leads to a profound change for the better way of living and loving in society and throughout the world. We can see that the multiplying of the loaves in the feeding of the five-thousand was an integral part of Christ’s message and not just a symbol.
We may not have much. We might say, “I am poor” or, “Our church us poor”. But Christ simply says: “Give me what you have”. And when we do give to him and share what we have, he will use it to achieve more than we can imagine.
Many people put satisfying physical or material needs first, with little attention paid to understanding and satisfying spiritual needs.
When Christ says: “I am the bread of life” … and “this is the bread which comes down from heaven, if anyone eats of this bread, he or she will live forever”, he alludes to the incarnation; that his self-giving will be complete only in his death and resurrection. Then we can understand when he says: “The bread which I give is my own flesh; I give it for the life of the world.
When we receive Christ into our lives by faith, we receive the Holy Spirit we become the temple of the Holy Spirit whom we should not grieve by our thoughts and actions.
We should offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God, as Christ died, to be holy and pleasing to God, by transforming our minds, body and soul to behaviour Christ-like and the process of sanctification will continue in us because of what Christ has done and what the Holy Spirit continues to do.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
St Peter's Church 