first communion

How to Live Forever

by Father Brian J. Soliven on Sunday June 4, 2023

From God's vantage, death is actually bizarre and weird. Maybe that is why it hurts so much when our loved ones pass? From the beginning it was not so. As we read in the Book of Genesis, God created us in his “image and likeness” (Cf. Genesis 1:27). He formed Adam from the dust of the earth and “breathed” life into him. Humanity was meant to live for eternity with God. Sadly, Adam and Eve disobeyed God; sin and all its misery rushes into the world like a tidal wave. Our bodies now become corrupted. We grow witheringly old, wrinkly, and weak. The suffering and pain we all experience in this life was never meant to be. Now enter the glory of Jesus Christ. Our Lord comes into the world to restore our eternity. He takes on these broken bodies of ours and unites it to himself and carries it all the way to Calvary, mounting it on the wood of the cross. He pays the price of Adam’s sin through his own body and blood, thus restoring us in the process. You and I have the opportunity to enter into the eternity of Heaven at every single Mass. It is here that Christ offers to us to “eat his body and drink his blood”. The Eucharist is not symbolic! It is truly Him. The other churches that say it is merely a symbol or unimportant are gravely wrong. They are missing out on Heaven itself! For our Lord himself clearly tells us: Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” (Cf. John 6:52-71)