“Are you listening?”
If Jesus is the Word of God, then we must, as the Father says on the mountaintop, “Listen to him,” (Matthew 17:5). When we listen, we receive something from outside of us and not only receive it within us, but we incorporate it: things we hear become a part of our knowledge and memory. Yet Jesus Himself is the Word of God: when we listen to Jesus we receive not only knowledge, but we receive God: does He not say to His apostles, “Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me,” (Luke 10:16)? Whoever listens to Jesus receives Him, and thus receives God: “…whoever believes has eternal life,” because it is by every Word that comes from the mouth of God that we live, and Jesus is that Word!
The ancestors of the Jews ate manna but did not live forever, because God did not give His Word but gave bread meant to sustain them through the Exodus, but not for eternity. However Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.” In giving His Flesh He gives Himself, and thus we do not live on bread alone, but by the Word of God that has become our bread, our food: our source of everlasting life.
At every Mass Jesus says of bread and wine “This is my Body…this is my blood.” Do we believe Him? Let us strive to do so, for He also says, “…whoever believes has eternal life.”