Dear friends in Christ

We continue our journey through chapter six of St John’s Gospel this weekend and reflecting on the Blessed Eucharist. As I said in my Homily last week, the first reading at Mass is normally thematically linked with the Gospel. In these current weeks the link is very clear and we listen to the account from the Book of Kings, of how Elijah was given bread to sustain him on his journey to Mount Horeb, the Mountain of God. Those forty days of pilgrimage are an image of the Christian pilgrim, travelling though this life to our true homeland of Heaven. To assist us in this pilgrimage, God has given us not mere bread for our bodies, but food for the soul; the food that endures into eternal life. We need this food to sustain us, otherwise the journey would be too much, and we would falter on the way. Let us think of those who have fallen-away from the practise of the Faith and so deprive themselves of this heavenly food. Let us also pray and encourage them back into the fold before it is too late and they die of hunger along the way.

Our own desire to receive this Food of Life can be renewed many times throughout each day as we can make a Spiritual Communion. This consists in an ardent desire to receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and in a loving conversation as if we had already received him (St Alphonsus). The visit to the Blessed Sacrament is also a very beneficial practice, a manifestation of our gratitude, a sign of the love and adoration we owe our Lord (St Pope Paul VI).

Next weekend—15th—is the Solemnity of The Assumption of Our Blessed Lady into Heaven. We will rejoice on that Day in the eternal life Mary shares with her Divine Son; she was assumed body and soul into Heaven, and they await us there, at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, fed and sustained on the Body of Christ in the Mass.

God bless you all!

Msgr Kevin Hale