Food for Eternal Life

06-22-2025Weekly ReflectionFr. Bing Colasito

For more than three years, a missionary found himself imprisoned in China. So that, for one thousand and nineteen days, he was unable to receive the Eucharist. But through God’s blessings forty-one times, he was able to celebrate Mass and receive Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. How did this happen? One day during his captivity, he received a package from his mother, a bottle of Alka-Seltzer and a medicine bottle marked “pabulum vitae” (food of life). It took a little while before the missionary realized that his mother sent him a real treasure: between the Alka-Seltzer tablets were forty-one hosts, while the medicine was wine.

So, for forty-one days of his captivity, he was able to offer the Mass for his beloved China. In a small cell with all kinds of critters and insects, and a dim light coming from a single tiny electric bulb, he celebrated the Holy Eucharist. But like the few cents offered by the widow in Mark 12:41-44, or Lk. 21:1-4, no Mass in any Basilica or Cathedral could be more pleasing to God.

No one can fathom the goodness of the Lord in giving us the Holy Eucharist as the food of life. Before His “hour” came, on the night of the Last Supper, Jesus gave them His will. Will not in gold and silver, or a vast tract of land, which they can cultivate and grow a vineyard, but He gave us a treasure of immeasurable value, His Body and Blood. More than any material wealth, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away our sins. He offered Himself as the ultimate sacrifice, the food for eternal life, the sacrifice of the new covenant with God.

The Eucharist is the source and summit of our Christian life. (CCC 1423) From the Eucharist, all other graces flow. So great is the mystery of the real presence of Jesus in the Sacred Communion that it ontinues in the many hours of adoration when the Blessed Sacrament is exposed. In the Mass, the priest consecrates and transforms the ordinary bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. He is giving Himself in love to all the faithful through the minister of the Eucharist. It remains a mystery of faith, yet it is how believers draw the needed grace to sustain them in their daily tasks of witnessing and evangelizing.

One day, somebody asks St. Mother Teresa why she attends the early Mass daily, even though she looks exhausted from the previous day. According to her: Without the daily morning sacrifice and communion, I could never have the strength to carry out the arduous task of the day.

The Eucharist is the highest expression of Jesus’ love for humanity, the only sacrifice for the expiation of our sins. Love is repaid only by love, and the Eucharist is the work of divine love – the frequent celebration and reception of Jesus is man’s highest expression to honor this love. Besides that, the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ are the only spiritual food for eternal life. The Eucharist transforms who and what we are, making us children of God and stewards of His creation. In the Blessed Sacrament, His desire to unite with us and continue to live in us is fulfilled. He becomes present in our midst.