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The Forward Day by Day Meditation for March 23, 2023

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THURSDAY, March 23 GREGORY THE ILLUMINATOR, Bishop and Missionary, c.332

John 6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

Jesus is speaking metaphorically, and John records Jesus’s words in such a way as to give them layered meaning. Obviously, these verses speak to the sacramental rite of the eucharist, but Jesus is also claiming to be the manna that God sent the hungry Hebrew children wandering through the wilderness. Can you see the connection? You and I are children wandering through wilderness, sustained and cared for by God.

Taking these verses too literally can prove dangerous. For example, does it matter whether communion bread is wheat instead of, say rice? Some people have posited that it does, but it seems absurd to think that wheat alone serves as the vehicle for grace. It is the grace and not the element that counts.

Jesus asks us to lean into faith and not into religious strata. We are to rely upon God rather than law and to look to grace, that amazing and beautiful grace!

MOVING FORWARD: Attend a mid-week Holy Eucharist and think of these words from the Gospel of John.

PRAY for the Diocese of Ziwa Rukwa (Tanzania)

Today the Church remembers .

Ps 69:1-23(24-30)31-38 * 73 | Jeremiah 22:13-23 | Romans 8:12-27 | John 6:41-51