Gospel: April 19, 2024
April 19, 2024 (Friday)
3rd Week of Easter
Psalter: Week 3 / (White)
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 117: 1bc, 2
Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.
1st Reading: Acts 9: 1-20
Gospel: John 6: 52-59
The Jews were arguing among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus replied, “Truly, I say to you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
My flesh is really food, and my blood is truly drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood, live in me, and I in them. Just as the Father, who is life, sent me, and I have life from the Father, so whoever eats me will have life from me. This is the bread from heaven; not like that of your ancestors, who ate and later died. Those who eat this bread will live forever.”
Jesus spoke in this way in Capernaum when he taught them in the synagogue.
Reflection: “New relationship”
Jesus always offers us a new relationship. He also challenges us to a new way of relating. We need to leave our old life behind. We are called to conversion. The first reading for today, from the Acts of the Apostles, narrates the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the Apostle. Paul found a new life in Christ and he never returned to his old life. In today’s Gospel, Jesus reminds us of the old way of understanding what the bread from heaven might mean. The ancestors of the Israelites ate the manna in the desert while understanding it as bread coming down from heaven since the manna were falling from the skies (cf. Ex. 16). The Israelites in the wilderness remained stubborn and selfish despite the manna provided them. Thus, the new way of understanding the bread from heaven is to relate it with Jesus who is always willing to offer himself for the nourishment of other people’s lives. Those who ate the manna died. The one who eats the bread of life, who is Jesus, will live forever. We are challenged to become more and more self-giving as Jesus invites us to a new way of relating.
