As we came to the end of our Easter season, and even more so with Pentecost and the Feast of the Holy Trinity, we focused on how God’s saving act through his Son was completed, or made permanent, through his Spirit. The Spirit who remains with us, who is the continuing presence of Jesus with us, of God in our world, in our lives.
Jesus, just like Moses in our first reading (Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a), pointed out that “man does not live by bread alone”. But conversely it is also true that we cannot live by spirit alone. We are flesh and blood, bodies that live and breathe and eat and drink. God became one with us in a body just like ours. So he knows how we need to experience him, not only in our inner souls, our spirits, in our minds and intellects, but also in our bodies. So he provided also for that need.
He left himself as food for those bodies (John 6:51-58). Alongside everything else we need to sustain us, he left us food. Real, physical food, food that is his being – the body and blood, soul and divinity, of his son. That food, come down from heaven, we can eat, and it sustains us, just as the manna that God sent to the starving Israelites sustained them.
But this food is more than just calories and carbohydrates that will keep us from starving, it is food that will sustain us through whatever our bodies need to survive, to bring us finally to the Father who loves us: “whoever eats this bread will live forever”.
God covers every base in his attempt to save us. His Son died and rose. His left us his Spirit. He left us a meal that we share, which links us directly to his final meal, a meal that makes us one with him through every cell in our bodies. When we eat it we can say with Thomas, who struggled like us with his doubts and uncertainty, “my Lord and my God”.