That one alone is intelligent who tries to please
God and is mostly silent, or, if s/he speaks, speaks little—and says only what is necessary and pleasing to God.
- Anthony the Great - Sign in the monastery: “Do not break silence unless you can improve on it.” . . Something to keep in mind.)
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Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 66:8-9, 16-17, 20 John 6:44-51 Jesus said to the crowd: ‘No one can come to me
unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me,
and I will raise him up at the last day.
It is written in the prophets:
They will all be taught by God,
and to hear the teaching of the
Father,
and learn from it,
is to come to me.
Not that anybody has seen the Father,
except the one who comes from God:
he has seen the Father.
I tell you most solemnly,
everybody who believes has eternal
life. ‘I am the bread of life.
Your fathers ate the manna in the desert
and they are dead;
but this is the bread that comes down from heaven,
so that a man may eat it and not
die.
I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.
Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever;
and the bread that I shall give is my flesh,
for the life of the world.’
Reflection on the Scriptures
Our spiritual journey is our own. God relates to us, however, in every encounter and experience throughout the course of our lives, an unfolding journey of love that, if we let God, if we believe that that
love is for us, and NOT against us, is and can be life transforming. I know of where I speak, for there was a time in my angst ridden youth, over 50 years ago now, that more often than not I would tell people I was, if not atheist, well I was at least agnostic. And, yet, well, here I am. In our Gospel today, we find words that were not
only I am sure, a reassurance for the Johannine community, but for us 2,000 plus years into an equally uncertain world, that Jesus is the only bread of love that will feed us, save us, love us, heal us, forgive us, and raise us always up. For Jesus is, ‘the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that Jesus gives is his ‘flesh for the life of the world’ (John 6:51). Every day, with every encounter and experience on our spirit
quest God’s love awaits to feed us with love divine, our only task is to keep looking for, let that love feed our heart and soul and nourish us, and to always and forever let God’s love every second of every day surprise us anew. - by Kent Beausoleil, S.J.
The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, by James Arraj
https://innerexplorations.com/catchtheomor/resurrecion.htm Inner Growth Publications, 2007.
Chapter 4: The Resurrection of Jesus The Resurrection Body of Jesus What we are doing here is developing an idea that was already
present in St. Thomas’ account of the nature and qualities of resurrection bodies in his Summa Theologica. What he said there, however, is not easy to understand because of the difficulty of the subject matter, and by his use of thirteenth century physics and cosmology. But Thomas makes it clear what the fundamental principle is that should guide such a discussion: “From the glorified soul there will flow into the body a certain perfection....and this perfection is called “the gift” (dos or dowry) of the glorified body.”51 Elsewhere he talks of “the overflow” (redundantia) of the soul’s glory into the body.”52 The essence of what Thomas is saying is really no different than what we saw St. Paul saying, and we can express it like this. The spiritual soul is the form of the body, and it gives the body a higher way of being, as we saw. But if the spiritual soul is united to the Spirit, then it is transformed by this union and receives a higher way of being, which we could call a supernatural being. But since the soul is still the form of the body, its new way of being will cause
the body to exist and act in a new way, as well. What is at stake here is not a spiritual body that is so spiritual that it has no connection with the material, but a real physical body that becomes hyper-real.
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