Day 23# The Gospel according to John is also called “Spiritual Gospel” as it contains lot of insight to Jesus’ teachings and its quite different in character from the other three gospels because it tells about Jesus in symbolic ways. The longest chapter in this gospel is Ch 5 with 71 verses. And one of the most prominent and contradicting teaching of Christ during His time of mission, is in this chapter i.e, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life within you.” Now when a person hears these words, he will react in this way. “What is he talking about, eating flesh & drinking blood; does he want us to become cannibals?” A lot of followers turned away from Jesus by hearing these words, making His teachings insane & hard to follow. Because they missed the core of this teaching. The expressions to eat flesh and to drink blood already carried symbolic meaning both in the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament; we find these words (eating flesh and drinking blood) understood as symbolic for persecuting or assaulting someone i.e laying down oneself. When a man is born on this earth, he doesn’t have anything except for his body. And when Jesus said to eat His body and drink His blood, He is symbolically depicts the ultimate sacrifice that He is going to do and He just wants us to accept His sacrifice. He doesn’t have any Money, Bank balance, Property, Gold or Silver, He only had His body and that too He was going to give for us. TOTAL SURRENDRANCE! When we eat that small bread & drink wine, during Holy Mass, we are not just eating His body & drinking His blood, but also accepting His sacrifice and making ourselves worthy in the eyes of our God by becoming one with Christ which will lead us to life that God has for us. As Pope Benedict XVI beautifully says, “By making the bread into His body and wine into His blood, He anticipates His death, accepts in His heart & He transforms it into an action of love. What on the outside is simply brutal violence – the Crucifixion – from is within becomes an ACT of Total SELF-GIVING LOVE.” When I eat His body, do I believe in His passion? His love? His sacrifice? Do I surrender myself in totality to God as Jesus did for me? Do I accept Jesus and His teachings fully or just those which are convenient for me to follow? youtube/watch?v=5x6khRQFlOc
Posted on: Tue, 15 Apr 2014 14:12:38 +0000
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