Thursday 3rd week of Easter
"Jn 6:44-51"
Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh."
"I am the bread of life." We never have enough of the Eucharist for we can't ever have enough of God. He is that Bread that we ask for many times a day, "Give us this day our daily bread." This is the fuel of the saints. To go up to Heaven we need the Bread that came down from Heaven. Remember E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial pointing to the sky and saying "Home"? Well, he was right. Our home is up there, and to climb up there our 'rocket' runs on the Eucharist.
In the same way that E.T. managed to get a device to "phone home", persecuted Christians have found the most amazing resources to be able to receive the Eucharist. In nearly two thousand years the Sacramental Jesus has been in all kinds of places: cathedrals and dungeons, basilicas and caves... The daily Bread can reach everywhere when needed. A Latvian Bishop, Boleslas Sloskans (1893-1981), was arrested soon after his episcopal ordination, jailed in seventeen Soviet prisons, deported to Siberia and exiled for over thirty years. With other priests, prisoners also in the Solovki Archipelago, they used a glass for a chalice and the lid of a tin can for a paten. The bread was provided by the jailers. The wine was made from raisins soaked in water. They celebrated Mass at night, in secret. In the morning, in the convoy going to work, Bishop Sloskans distributed the consecrated Hosts to the Catholics, under the utmost secrecy. He hid the remaining Hosts under the roots of a tree, wrapped in a piece of cloth so that those who had not received Communion could do so during the day.
Living in such difficult conditions (hard labour, insufficient food and all sorts of inhuman deprivations and treatment) they survived - as the bishop pointed out - thanks to that "daily Bread."
Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, may I never get used to receiving Jesus in this daily Bread.
