10 minutes wih Jesus are group of Catholic priests who share friendship with Jesus, plus keenness to help young people of all ages to learn the art of loving Jesus and speaking to Him. You can find them in WhatsApp, Spotify, Ivoox, Telegram, Goggle Podcasts and Apple Podcast. Every saturday, we are going to share one meditation by 10 minutes with Jesus. Enjoy it.
My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence, I beg your pardon for my sins, and the grace to make this time or prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my Father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
TV Show
Much like whenever we sometimes watch a show on TV, you get a little brief recap at the start of that to fill you in and what’s been happening in the previous episode, just to highlight what’s going on so that you don’t miss the action of this particular episode, and the gospel for today begins a little bit like that, we find ourselves in chapter 6 of John’s Gospel, one of the most beautiful parts of the Bible, and the church gives us a little recap of where we find ourselves in that story. It says, after Jesus had fed the five thousand, his disciples saw him walking on the water full-stop, next day, our minds are kind of thrown completely wide open by that, I think Jesus feeds 5,000 people, and then his disciples see him walking on the water. Okay, that’s what happened before now this is what we want to hear, and just hearing those two things Lord, just makes us almost stop dead in our tracks, first of all that you fed 5,000 people is a kind of an amazing thing and we know these stories, we know them well but when we hear it kind of synthesized in that sense like, yeah you know he fed 5,000 people, he walked in the water yeah then next! It seems to us as if these are like ordinary events when these are amazing miracles that just happened and occurred all in your presence, and we almost come to expect if we’re watching this kind of series about the miracles, the wonders of Jesus, that they’re going to be amazing things happening, when that is true because whenever you are in our lives, truly amazing things happen. And what you’re going to speak to us about today in the gospel, is leading up to the most magnificent thing, which our hearts could ever conceive and that is the Eucharist, your body, blood, soul and divinity given to us as a gift on Holy Thursday for us to receive and to cherish, a gift of eternal life offered to us in a promise, the Eucharist.
Chapter 6
So, in this episode of John, chapter 6, the people have had their feet and now they’re looking for Jesus again, and they’re a little bit confused that they can’t find you exactly there and in Tiberias where they have been, and so they see that there are some boats on the shore of the lake, and that you couldn’t possibly have got into one of those because the boats are all still there, so they’re beginning to grasp about that you’re not just a kind of run-of-the-mill teacher, you are working wonders and powers, which are opening their hearts and their minds to completely new realities. So in any case, they set off and they head over to another little town along the coast, to Capernaum; anyway Lord, you’re there in Capernaum, and you walked on the water we know that, and you have fed these people, they are looking for something extra now. It is a lovely little point that you know just by walking on the water to get from Tiberias to Capernaum, how you show your dominance over nature, and yet also a respect for it we could say, well you’re the lord and master of all things, you could have just sort of magic to yourself to be in Capernaum from, in one second you’re in Tiberias in the next minute you’re there but no, you show dominance over nature, you walk in kind of an ordinary way, but old betta in extraordinary circumstances walking on the water isn’t exactly what any of us can do, but it shows that you want to be accessible to us, not only in these miraculous events, but also in these ordinary moments of the day, that there is a kind of a lovely mix when it comes to how you interact with us, in kind of supernatural and natural, and extraordinary and ordinary, and all of these things they build into what you’re really looking for, which is a relationship with us, when the people come and say “I rabbi how did you come to be here” you say “I tell you more suddenly, you’re not looking for me because you have seen the signs, you have had all the bread you wanted to eat.”
Jesus knows
Jesus knows that they’re looking for him, but their hearts are not just quite there yet, their motives are not so pure, and you have to prepare them Lord for what it is that you really want to talk to them which is the Eucharist, and say to us “do not work for the food that cannot last, but for the food that endures for eternal life.” Now, in one sense to talk about the Eucharist at the moment seems a little bit strange to speak about is specifically Holy Communion, because for so many of us that’s just not a reality at the moment, we cannot receive Holy Communion, but in another way, this whole bread of life discourse, which we’re going to hear in the mass in these days, and in John chapter 6, it opens our heart to understand a little bit more about the gift of the Eucharist, whenever we cannot receive it. And in a very practical way, all this talking about the Eucharist is preparing us to receive you, but also it is forcing us to give you thanks for the last time we received you. There is a beautiful story I read a few years ago written by a priest called father Jean Bernard, who was a priest from Luxembourg, he was imprisoned in the concentration camp at Dachau, where a lot of the priests were imprisoned during the Third Reich. And he writes this beautiful little encounter about Christmas Day in 1941, that he has with another priest in the combat, a German priest: -I’m on kid duty today, Cabbie whispers to me- that’s one of the other prisoners who’s a priest, -we are returning to the assembly Square on Christmas morning, and our column is marching alongside the German clergy scholar for a brief moment when it is time to deliver the pails for the midday meal, I exchange with a colleague assigned to go to barrack 26 that day. I suspect that Cabbie wants to give me something and I am eager to find out what it is, he is standing at the entrance of the barbed-wire barrier around the barrack, and just as an iced.
Next to Cabbie
We are not allowed to enter but I have to leave the peels in front of the gate. I set mine down next to Cabbie and he bends down to pick it up, quickly presses a carefully folded piece of paper into my hand, very softly he Minds the word inkless, I have difficulty concealing my excitement, swiftly I hide that precious gift in my glove, and as I hurry back home, images from the time of the catacombs come to mind. Back then as nine, the most holy had to be preserved from desecration, so the Greek term for fish exes became a code word for the Eucharist, since it is composed of the initial letters of the phrase ‘Jesus Christ son of God Savior’ after the evening meal, we Luxembourgers meet a few friends inconspicuous fee in the darkness outside the barrack, and we divide the precious pieces into as many particles as humanly possible, and then the Christ child entered our hearts.
Holy Communion
It is lovely to read about that joy to receive you Lord in those terrible circumstances, the great graces that we have longing eager anticipation, just think at that moment whenever he realizes that that he realized he has been given in Holy Communion, and how he longs not only to receive you, but to share you with others, and that’s something that we can make it all identify with at the moment, that whenever we hear about the Eucharist, it immediately makes us think how much we would love to receive Holy Communion, and how much stored we would love that you would be part of our lives. And in a strange way it’s a little bit like we’re all preparing for our First Holy Communion again, if we remember the joy and the excitement that was in our hearts, as we were preparing to receive you, and it’s just like those disciples here they’re going to hear what you have to say about the Eucharist in Capernaum, because they hear these wonderful things about it, “I am the bread of life that he who sees me, shall have the gift of eternal life” then you are thinking “wow when am I going to get to receive you” and all of these readings in the gospel are giving us an eager anticipation of the moment whenever we will be with you, whenever we will receive you into our hearts again, we understand that when we receive the Eucharist, we receive the complete gift, the son, the Father for the forgiveness of our sins, whenever you said those words “so this is my body, this is my blood” there’s a completeness in that gift, and so whenever we receive you in Holy Communion we are receiving you in a complete sense of body, blood, soul and divinity, anything but the last time that we were able to receive Holy Communion, we received the totality of that gift, and it’s a beautiful thought that all of the graces that we need are contained in Holy communion and in your mercy Lord, you knew that when the last time we received Holy communion, it was going to be a long while before we would be able to receive you again, and yet all of those graces that you give to us in every moment that we receive Holy communion they endure until the next time that we receive you, and even if we’re kind of used to receiving Holy Communion on the daily basis or very regularly, maybe we lose sight of the fact that every time we receive you in Holy Communion, we receive everything that we need in that moment, and so all of the graces that we received back then they still endure right up until this moment, and we need to keep those graces as a kind of a special treasure in our heart that continuing to sustain us until the next time that we are able to receive you. I think how lovely it was Lord whenever your mother received Holy Communion, and whenever she received the body, blood, soul and divinity of her son, maybe from the hands of St. John, that it must have been like receiving you again in her womb, I thought it was like two hearts beating in unison, but also how she would relive the experience of the cross, whenever she received your body from the cross, so Mary help us in this moment we need to prepare to receive your son Jesus in Holy Communion, to give thanks for all of the graces that we have received in the past, I pray that they will continue to sustain us and to help us, until we get to receive your son Jesus again.
It´s the end
I give you thanks my God for the good resolutions, affections and inspirations which you communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into effect my mother Immaculate, St. Joseph my father and Lord, my guardian angel intercede for me.
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