This Sunday’s Gospel reading is John 6.51-58
Jesus said: “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.”
Last Tuesday, many churches remembered St Maximilian Kolbe, who gave up his life in place of another prisoner about to be executed in Auschwitz.
Maximilian’s life and his death reveal to us shows us what it means to feed on, and abide in, Jesus Christ. A Roman Catholic priest, he secretly celebrated the Eucharist when he was imprisoned in the concentration camp. As he celebrated and fed upon Jesus in the Communion, so his own life was drawn into that movement of self-giving love. Fed by Jesus, he was able to abide in Christ, and Christ in him.
Prayer intentions
Pray for all whose lives embody that self-offering in our own time – some in dramatic ways, and some in ways that go unnoticed by the outside world.