Pat and John just headed out to a noon Twins game at the new stadium! Pat mumbled about feeling guilty, but they are both super excited! The corn is in the ground and there will be a week or so now til we get to May before the beans can be safely planted... My garden is not getting tilled today, and I told Pat that I know he isn't guilty about that. I just would like to have it tilled in time to get some help planting. Maria with her family will be here later today, and my daughter makes sounds of wanting to have a garden someday soon... so I thought this would be a good time to refresh her memory on the planting part... I do have JOhn here now too, but Pat pretty much dictates what he is doing. Although he did mow my lawn yesterday, and that is super nice to have done by someone else.
I was to be orrienting at my new job at the Minneota Manor Nursing Home yesterday... I have decided that subconsciously I have decided that I am done with cancer, so I am filling up my life with new and exciting things. It fell through so I had the afternoon to myself as a gift. I was out putting bedding on the line... getting ready for guests... and it struck me that it would be the last chance for little Davey to ride along with grandpa... so I went over and watched the other two so that Ruth and her little guy, who is totatlly enamored with grandpa and the "brummmm brummmms" (tractors) right now. After Simon went to school on the bus... Mary and I had fun out enjoying the day with her baby kitties and their mom. The big picturesque cottonwood on the edge of their driveway called us... as the baby green leaves are growing as you watch them practically! Mary wanted to run and Purrrrs, the mother cat, did too... the result was numerous races with the two of them running side by side from the barn out to the tree or from the gravel road to grandma sitting by the fence. Mary loved it! I think Purrrrs did to as well as her babies that tried to follow along. The fresh air and the sunshine was enjoyed by one and all. I love those times that you thought were taken from your life by this or that and then unexpectedly they are free and are a gift that keeps on giving! Time is certainly precious!
We are getting into the "meat" of John 6 today! It seems that the Catholic Church is the only one that takes what Jesus is sharing here as the literal truth! I remember that a local pastor in the paper addressed John 6 and his argument was that just like when Jesus says that he is a "door" or a "gate" or a "shepherd" is he truly those things therefore is he truly in the form of bread and wine... His Body and Blood? His point was that Jesus did not mean this literally. I fail to see how he could negate all that Jesus empahtically tells us to do here in this short sighted way! He ends the Gospel today with these words... "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world."
There are many Eucharistic miracles that are true signs of Jesus showing us beyond a shadow of a doubt that He truly is giving himelf to us in the Eucharist! http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/lanciano.html I just googled this site to remind myself of all the details of this most amazing miracle where the host turned into actual heart tissue and the wine turned into actual blood! The priest consecrating the bread and wine was actually in his heart questioning the whole "truth"... and this was the answer that after 12 centuries it continues to be there for all to see! This happened in the 8th century in Lanciano, Italy! For me there is no doubt! There are those that complain that they as Protetants are not allowed to come to the table to receive the Body and Blood of Christ! It is crystal clear to me... If you want to receive the Eucharist you must believe that it is Chirst! And if you believe that is true... why would you be anything but Catholic?
Jesus, from the first moments of my Catholic Journey as I lived in the convent with the sisters studying religious life... day after day at daily mass in their light filled chapel I watched the elderly priest consecrate the mass and learned of the "truth". I fell in love with the Lord's supper and I was fed with your body and blood and I became more and more yours... Your hand was upon me and I thank you with my life! Use me to your honor and glory! Jesus I trust in You! Bless-bless, Barb
Please bear with me... this is so good that I want to share it with you all today on this theme of "I am the living bread". It is written by Caryll Houselander, who died in 1954 and was a British mystic, poet, and spiritual teacher:
"In the offering of the bread and wine we give material things, as our Lady gave her humanity, to be changed into Christ. At the words of the consecration the bread and the wine are not there any more; instead, Christ is there. In that which looks and tastes and feels like unleavened bread, Christ comes closer to us even than the infant could come, even than the child in the womb. He is our food, our life. We give ourselves up to him. HE gives himself up to us. He is lifted up in the priest's hands, sacrificed. God accepts the sacrifice and gives Christ back to us. He is lowered onto the altar; he who was taken down from the cross is given to us in Communion, buried, laid to rest in our hearts. It is his will to rise from the dead in our lives and to come back to the world in his risen Host-life. In his risen life on earth Christ often made himself recognized only by the characteristic of his unmistakable love, by showing his wounds, by his infinite courtesy, by the breaking of bread. He would not allow the sensible beauty and dearness of his human personality, his familiar appearance, to hide the essential Self that he had come back to give. Wholly consistant with this is Christ's return to us in the Host. WE know that in it he is wholly present: body, blood, soul, and divinity. But all this is hidden; even his human appearance is hidden. Because this is the way of absolute love, he insists on coming to us stripped of everything but himself. For this self-giving Christ in the Host is poor, poorer than he was when, stripped of everything, he was naked on the Cross. HE has given up even the appearance of his body, the sound of his voice, his power of mobility... He has made himself as close to nothing as he could be, while still being accessible to us... In the Host, he is our life on earth today."
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