VOGEL — Bread from heaven
The Lord spoke in parables because the people would not accept His words if He spoke plainly.
Only to His Apostles did He explain the meaning of His words.
Yet with His most difficult teaching, that we must eat His Body and drink His Blood to have eternal life, He lays it on the line: “Unless you eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life within you.”
It was a test — Do you trust Me? Do you truly believe Me?
Jesus could have explained that there would be a new covenant of bread and wine, food for all as He had provided to the 5,000.
That would have gone over really well; for bread and wine, everyone would have been on board.
Peter passed the test. He states so simply, “to whom shall we go?”
Peter has committed himself to Jesus and even when he doesn’t understand, cannot comprehend, he trusts and follows.
We also do not understand, cannot comprehend how the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus at each celebration of the Mass.
But our heavenly Father has blessed us with faith; for some a gift from our parents, for others perhaps a gift directly from heaven.
In a world of plenty with a life of comfort, our faith is fragile. We may struggle to put aside our earthly “reality” and lose ourselves in our faith so that when tested we too would respond, “To whom shall we go?”
When we hear the words of consecration from the altar, we should place ourselves before Jesus as did Peter and know in our hearts that we are hearing the truth, and commit anew each time to follow Jesus in every aspect of our lives.
Mr. Vogel is a member of Cathedral of St. Joseph parish in Jefferson City.
