Food & drink

 Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. (John 6:53-57)

Eat my flesh? Drink my blood? Really? These are metaphors, of course. Flesh and blood are a way of saying the whole person, everything they are.

And we do, in fact, eat Jesus, so that everything he is may be ours—his life, his love, his strength, his suffering and especially the intimacy he shares with the “living Father.”

We were never intended to be outsiders, looking in at this mystery. Our fulfillment is to be inside, participating in the unfailing current of love that flows between the heart of God and Jesus’ own heart.

So we eat his words and savor his actions. We hold them in the inner eye of imagination and turn them over in our minds, not so much to understand things about him as to experience his presence awakening within us, illumining mind and heart.

Then, we can sink into our hearts and abide with him, resting in the love we share. Do this, and after a while, your life, too, becomes food and drink for a famished world.

Pr. David L. Miller