Wednesday of the Third Week of Easter
Losing someone you love is difficult at best even if it might have been expected. Everyone grieves differently and that is okay. Occasionally, in both the person dying and in their family there is a level of what almost seems unusual acceptance. Faith often is the reason for their peace. I have seen dying patients look up as if they were seeing heaven and reach their open arms to the heavens. It is as if, like Stephen, these people could see Christ welcoming them home. For those left behind there is still a process of letting go. We may not feel it, but these times are when the Lord is trying even harder to remind us of his desire to feed us and lead us to from death to new life.
When we are in the midst of facing some sort of death: it could being unemployed or underemployed, it could be that an illness of a friend or child, the loss of job, or struggling through loss of a relationship, Easter joy might feel greatly diminished. The road we climb seems only always uphill as if we are being persecuted. Still the reading makes clear that if we truly are attentive to the word then we can become aware of the signs of hope and joy that God is offering us.
Yet how could joy be the result of suffering? Joy and suffering would seem to mix like oil and water. Easter, teaches us otherwise. Death leads to resurrection. The gospel reminds us of the source of the connection between these two apparent opposites. The connector is Jesus.
John’s gospel reminds us that Jesus is more than manna. Jesus is the bread of life. The bread which becomes Body and the wine that becomes blood, making present the living sacrifice of cross. This bread of life is nourishment for our soul. This Eucharist, is the source and summit of our faith. It is in becoming what we receive, that we enter more deeply into the new and eternal covenant.
As life’s challenges contend with our resurrection joy, offer a prayer that gives over the suffering or that which paralyzes you. Allow the Lord to help you to carry the cross. Allow the one who is our bread of life to transform your sorrow to joy. So it was for the early Christians; so it can be for us both now and forever. Amen! Alleluia!
- Michael Montgomery