We begin our Jubilee Year on Tuesday: The Jubilee Is A Special Year of Grace. We begin our Golden Jubilee with The Special ‘Bread of Life’ Retreat

Every three years we get to make a very special Eucharistic retreat with the Lord. Because St. Mark’s Gospel is very short, we enhance it with readings from the Bread of Life Discourse, the sixth Chapter of St. John’s Gospel. We pick up from last week: “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while” … and he began to teach them many things.

So this week, I have invited our own Father Samuel Aliba to teach us on the Eucharist:

“The Gospel reading this weekend marks the beginning of a five Sunday series where our Gospel would be read from the Gospel of John.

“Hence, we would be taking a break from Mark’s gospel and focus on the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. This sixth chapter of John’s Gospel is known in scriptural studies as the Bread of Life Discourse.

“The discourse begins with the miracle of the multiplication of loaves where Jesus multiplied five barley loaves and two fish to feed over five thousand people. Eventually, the miracle attracted bigger followership to Jesus.

“The people began to follow Jesus as means to satisfy their physical hunger for food. However, Jesus told them to rather aspire to something higher than physical satisfaction saying:

“Do not work for food that perishes but for food that endures for eternal life which the Son of Man will you” (John 6:27).

“Consequently, His interaction with the crowd set the tone for Jesus to reveal himself as the bread of life. It also served as a teaching moment for Him to give a deep and profound teaching on the Eucharist as the Bread of life which nourishes and strengthens us on our pilgrim journey towards heaven, just as the manna sustained the Israelites in the wilderness for forty years while they journeyed to the promised land. It is from these scriptural teachings on the Eucharist that the Church draws and expounds its doctrine on the Eucharist as the true body and blood of Christ together with his soul and divinity under the appearance of bread and wine (Confer Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1374).

“Friends in Christ, as we partake of the body and blood of Christ in each and every mass, let’s remember to do so with a spirit of thanksgiving especially in line with the fact that the term Eucharist means Thanksgiving. “It is a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Father, a blessing by which the Church expresses her gratitude to God for all His benefits, for all that He has accomplished through creation, redemption and sanctification” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1360).

“As we celebrate and receive the Eucharist with hearts full of thanks, let us also allow the grace that flows from the sacrament to lead us to a deeper knowledge and love of God and His Church.”

Fr. Kilian, Fr. Samuel, our Deacons and Seminarian and our Parish Staff and great Disciples and Volunteers.

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