[00:00] Our Lord is teaching the crowds who witnessed the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes. That He is truly the bread of life. He who grants the grace and growth in His life. Now, he says an interesting thing here. He proclaims a hard teaching, "I am the bread of life," and He goes on further explaining

[00:35] to those around Him, and many of them were His own disciples. But He says here, "I told you that although you have seen Me, you do not believe." And then He says that phrase, "Everything the Father gives Me will come to Me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to Me." Now the people had enough reason to believe that Jesus was God, at the very least

[01:10] that He was a great prophet because they witnessed the multiplication of the loaves and many miracles that He worked. He gave them all the criteria they needed in order to elevate their minds and their hearts to that level of faith, but He also recognized that many were not going to believe in what He was proposing, that He was truly the bread of life, that they must eat His

[01:41] flesh and drink His blood if they want to have life within them. Now, he's not making an absolute statement as far as the life that we receive in Baptism, but what He is trying to help the people understand that just as when we're children, and we're growing or even now, if we don't eat, then we die. So it's one thing to be born into life, but it's another thing to sustain that life.

[02:17] So, although we can be in the life of God, the grace of God, and possess His grace within us, we need a means by which we are to sustain that. And it's not just sustaining that life that our Lord wants; He wants to be united to us. So when we sustain the life of grace through receiving Him in the Eucharist, we are coming into greater union with Him.

[02:50] But it all depends on our belief that many of the people walked away from our Lord and even His disciples, and He turned to His apostles and said, "Will you also go away?" But they had that faith that was required, or that our Lord required of them. And St. Peter spoke for all of them and said, "No, Lord, for we have come to believe that You are the Son of God, and You possess the words of eternal life."

[03:26] "To whom shall we go?" That is true. There are many voices that are leading the sheep, us, astray in the world, just as there have been throughout all of history since the time of our Lord. But we, as His sheep, recognize His voice, and we have that faith which allows us to receive His grace and that sustenance that we need through the Holy Eucharist.

[04:03] And it's not just in receiving our Lord in the Eucharist. That's one mode of receiving Him, or receiving His grace, is through the actual reception of the Eucharist. But we always have to remember, as Pope St. John Paul II taught and the Catechism teaches, there's three different modes by which grace comes to us in the Eucharist. There is the, obviously, the Eucharist, which is the Communion where we receive our Lord.

[04:36] That's the highest mode of His life, His grace, which He imparts to our soul. But there is also the presence sacrament. And whenever we say sacrament, we mean something that imparts what it signifies, something that gives the actual grace. And His present sacrament means that He gives us grace just by being present to Him.

[05:07] Just like when people would come to our Lord, you know, 2,000 years ago, when He was, you know, all they had to have is the faith that, although He seemed to be just another man, He was actually God. And they came to that faith by seeing that He proclaimed the words of God, but He also worked the works of God that only God could work. And by this, they were able to believe that the person they were encountering wasn't just another man, but He was truly God.

[05:40] And that the words that He spoke brought forth eternal life. And then you have, so from the presence sacrament of just being in His presence here, His presence in the tabernacle, coming to visit Him, then you have the sacrifice sacrament, the sacrifice of the Mass, the sacrifice of the cross, which is brought or that we are brought into that reality.

[06:11] If you look at our Lord's one sacrifice that He made on Calvary in time, it extends throughout all of history from the beginning to the end. It's a reality that remains, and we're brought into that reality. We think of it as we're bringing heaven down to us, which is partly true, but for the most part, just as like, for example, when we receive Communion, the Eucharist, it's not exactly

[06:41] the same as when we're eating, obviously, the object of it is different, we're receiving our Lord. We think of it this way: when you're eating food, it becomes part of you. But when we receive our Lord in the Eucharist, the same as we do with food, there's a difference. We're brought into His body, we become part of Him. That's the distinction. So when we participate in the Mass, and we're not talking about the Communion, we're talking

[07:15] about from the presence sacrament to the sacrifice sacrament. That's another way in which God gives us grace just by participating in the sacrifice of the Mass. We're brought into heaven. We're brought into that eternal reality of His sacrifice, His one sacrifice. But the difference is, it was a bloody sacrifice on Calvary, but we call the Mass the unbloody

[07:45] sacrifice, but it's still the exact same sacrifice. And that's where many people make the mistake, they think, oh, well, Catholics just, they think that you have to continue the sacrifice. There was one sacrifice, Jesus made it. Yeah, that's true. But we have a more metaphysical mind. We have a faith-oriented mind by which we can see a reality that's greater than the temporal things of this earth. And we realize that those things that are spiritual are eternal.

[08:16] And the reality of our Lord's sacrifice was to be extended through all time and all space so that we are brought into that spiritual reality, that eternal reality, through participation in the Mass. But it's the same as when the people encountered our Lord 2,000 years ago. Even though there may have been some who had that great faith, like the apostles that didn't

[08:49] leave our Lord when He taught them this hard teaching, it still didn't change the fact that they couldn't see God face-to-face. That's for us when we get to heaven. So although we talk about the different modes of the grace, it doesn't necessarily mean that we're always going to feel that. It's through faith that we recognize that it's actually happening. And that's the faith our Lord is requiring of us. So let us not be like those who walked away from our Lord when He taught this hard saying,

[09:23] but let us let it increase our faith, knowing with the little faith that we have, like a mustard seed, that it will grow. And even if to the end of our life, our Lord doesn't allow us to feel anything when it comes to that, we recognize through faith that there is a change within us. There is a growth within us. And I'm sure our Lord will allow us to see many times over the fruits of this faith.

[09:58] But we make that offering to Him and the offering of faith, that although we do not see Him face to face, although we cannot see His divinity through His humanity, and doubly through the Eucharist, we do not see even His humanity through the species of bread and wine, we believe in His words. And we can repeat with St. Peter, "To whom shall we go, Lord? For we have come to know and believe that You are the Son of God, and only You have

[10:30] the words of eternal life."