3rd Week of Easter 2018 - Tuesday - God's answer to human longing

In asking the question, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?” the crowd shows that they are hungry not just for physical food, but for truth. They want answers, they want meaning, they want truth. The crowd represents all of humanity, asking God to give us a sign that we might believe.

So, the Lord begins to teach about God’s answer to this human longing. And he teaches that He is the answer, he is the truth, he is the bread that they long for. Deep down we don’t want a trick, we don’t want some thing, we want God himself. And Catholics believe that God gives Himself to us, in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, the Eucharist.

Pope Benedict wrote, “The Eucharist means God has answered:  The Eucharist is God as an answer, as an answering presence.”

At the Eucharistic table, the Holy Father writes, “we no longer stand before an imagined God but before the God who has truly given himself to us; before the God who has become for us Communion and who thus frees us and draws us from the margin into communion and leads us on to Resurrection.”

The Eucharist is God’s answer to man’s question “where can I see him, now, and believe in him”.
So many of our contemporaries are starving for truth; they go from one unsatisfying event to another, searching for God. All the while, he is here, present on the altar, present in the tabernacle, present in the eucharist chapel.

Each one of us, does well, to ask ourselves, who in my life, is God asking me, to lead here, to this place, to belief in his Eucharistic presence?

Let us ask the Lord to reawaken and deepen in us joy and reverence for his Eucharistic presence, that we may lead those who hunger for the bread of life, to Him, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That the Church will deepen in her devotion to the Eucharistic sacrifice which is the source and summit of our Christian life.  We pray to the Lord.

That the redemptive power of Christ’s Eucharistic sacrifice will extend to the hearts and minds of all those who govern peoples and nations.  We pray to the Lord.

That the Eucharist will be for priests the source of their joy and their deeper configuration to Jesus Christ.  We pray to the Lord.

That the Real Presence of Jesus will be experienced in all marriages, in all business relations, in all daily encounters, and in our friendships.  We pray to the Lord.

For those who live in want: that Jesus the Bread of Life will be their sustenance, and that Christians may bring the justice and mercy of Christ to all those in need.  We pray to the Lord.

For all those who have died, for all of the poor souls in purgatory, for all who have fought and died for our country’s freedom, and for [intention below], for whom this Mass is offered.

Incline your merciful ear to our prayers, we ask, O Lord, and listen in kindness to the supplications of those who call on you. Through Christ our Lord.