Stoned

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

“Sir, give us this bread always,” Jesus’ hearers said to Him in the Gospel passage of today. Bread of God, sent down from Heaven. And then He went on to tell them that He Himself is the Bread of Life.

Of course, we know that Jesus literally alluded to consuming His flesh as real food, and His blood as real drink, that we may have life within us. This is not some grotesque ritual, but one that bespeaks the intimacy with which He wants to enter our hearts to dwell there.

And that intimacy, of course, is the end goal of the Eucharist. It is this intimacy that is nourishment for eternal life; that is, in fact, eternal life.

We see Stephen, at the hour of his glorious martyrdom described in the first reading, full of this intimacy, full of this eternal life. It would almost seem from the description that this first Christian martyr, literally seeing Heaven opened with Jesus standing by the Father, scarcely felt the stones. They were less real to him than the intimacy He had had gained through the Holy Spirit and, no doubt, through the Eucharist itself.

Jesus tells us in today’s gospel that anyone who comes to him will not hunger. At the hour of his death, Stephen hungered for nothing. He had everything he wanted.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to fill your heart so completely with the Holy Spirit, and with His friendship, that the sufferings of every day, as terribly real as they are, have no power to touch your inner peace.