Thursday, May 9, 2019

Fr Ebuka Umekachikelu, MSP - Homily Friday, May 10, 2019



THE BREAD OF LIFE:“Jesus, the Bread of Life” is a theme that saturates John 6, which we have been reading this week. Jesus began his discourse on the bread of life with the miracle of loaves, during which he used five barely loaves and two fish to feed at least 5000 people. Jesus, concerned with human integral salvation, began with the physical and then moved on to the spiritual. Nevertheless, he places much emphasizes on the spiritual. He said to the people who were looking for him after the miracle: “… you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.  Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life” (John 6:26-27). Jesus has left for us something powerful in the Eucharist. Nowadays, every Christian denomination recognises this teaching of Jesus. Those who had previously no Eucharistic tradition have established it in various forms; but the Catholic tradition and teaching on the Eucharist is a continuation of the biblical tradition, as Jesus established it. In the Eucharistic celebration, the priest, acting in persona Christi, says the words of consecration, which transubstantiate the host and wine into the real body and blood of Jesus Christ. So, the consecrated specie is Jesus himself. On March 09, 2014, the most influential Pentecostal pastor in Sweden, Ulf Ekman, who founded the Word of Life Church in 1983, stunned his teaming congregation by his public announcement of his and his wife’s conversion to Catholicism. One of the reasons for this conversion was that he had no power to make available to his congregation the Eucharist, which is a sine-qua-none for a complete life in Christ. Do we recognise the power in the Eucharist?

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