Dear Brothers and Sisters, Fiat!
Over the last few Sundays the liturgy has presented us with the image filled with Jesus’ tenderness reaching out to the crowd and its needs. In today’s Gospel passage (cf. Jn 6:24-35) the perspective changes. The crowd whose hunger Jesus has satisfied begins to seek him anew and goes to encounter him. But for Jesus, it is not enough that people seek him. He wants people to know him. He wishes that the search for him and the encounter with him go beyond the immediate satisfaction of material needs. Jesus came to bring us something more, to open our lives to a wider horizon than the daily concerns of eating, clothing ourselves, career and so on. Thus, turning to the crowd, he exclaims: “you seek me, not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves (v. 26)”. In this way, he encourages the people to go a step further and to question themselves on the significance of the miracle, and not simply to take advantage of it. Indeed, the multiplication of the loaves and the fish is a sign of the great gift the Father has given to humanity, which is Jesus himself!
He, the true “bread of life” (v. 35), wants to satisfy not just the bodies but also the souls, giving the spiritual food that can satisfy profound hunger. This is why he invites the crowd to obtain not the food which perishes, but that which endures for eternal life (cf. v. 27). It is the food that Jesus gives to us every day: his Word, his Body, his Blood. The crowd listens to the Lord’s invitation, but does not understand its meaning — as often happens to us — and asks him: “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” (v. 28). Those who are listening to Jesus think that he is asking them to observe the precepts in order to obtain more miracles like the multiplication of the loaves. This is a common temptation; to reduce religion to only the practice of its laws, projecting onto our relationship with God the image of the relationship between servants and their master: servants must carry out the tasks that the master assigns to them in order to enjoy his benevolence. We all know this. Therefore, the crowd wants to know from Jesus which actions it must perform in order to please God. But Jesus’ reply is unexpected: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (v. 29). Today, these words are also addressed to us: God’s work does not consist so much in “doing” things, but in “believing” in Him whom He sent. This means that faith in Jesus allows us to carry out God’s works. If we allow ourselves to be involved in this loving and trusting relationship with Jesus, we will be able to perform good works that exude the fragrance of the Gospel for the good and needs of our brothers and sisters.
The Lord invites us not to forget that, if it is necessary to worry about bread, it is even more important to nurture our relationship with Him, to strengthen our faith in Him, who is the “bread of life” who came to satisfy our hunger for truth, our hunger for justice and our hunger for love.
In the passage of May 10, 1937, Jesus explains to Luisa how the Son of God wanted to make Himself food for the creature, to form the most beautiful works for the benefit of all creatures.
Every truth that Jesus manifests to us on the Divine Fiat is a growth that we make of It, it is one mouthful more, that serves in order to fortify us, warm us and conform us all the more in It, it is one sip more that we drink from the immense sea of the Divine Will, it is one Divine property more that we acquire. Every act more that we do in It, Jesus prepares before us His Celestial table, and if we love, God feeds us His love, if we pass to understand Him, He feeds us His Wisdom, so that God becomes our choice food, therefore in all that which we do, now He feeds us with His Power, now with His Goodness, now with His sweetness, now with His fortitude, light and our mercy.
Hence the human littleness, with living in the Eternal Volition absorbs us sip by sip, mouthful by mouthful, because being little, also for how much it is possible for a creature to take all together that which she must take of the Divine Being, more so that this serves to delight each other, God to give, and she to receive, God to give of His, and she to give God her littleness, God to work her as He wants, and she who lends herself to let Him work; it is the exchange on both parts, the harmonizing ourselves to each other, the speaking to each other, that forms God’s most beautiful works and He develops the life of His Will in the creature, without doing anything, she does nothing. Therefore it is necessary to work, to speak, to make God understood, to work, in order to make beautiful statues, the repeaters of God’s life.
Hence when God finds one who wants to listen to Him, to give themselves to Him, in order to receive, God doesn’t spare anything, of that [which] he is able and know how to do for creatures. When the creature is fed with the Divine Fiat, even to not knowing other food, and having formed the chain of her acts, all sealed by the characteristics of divine virtues, God remains imprisoned in his divine virtues in the creature, and then, if she loves it is God that makes display of the power of his love, of his goodness, sanctity, et cetera, in the acts of the creature, so that the power is such that goes forth through means of these acts that God does in the creature, that it invests Heaven and earth, flutters over all souls and with his powerful love, invests them, sweeps them away, makes her give the kiss of the Divine Volition in a way that the human family will feel his power, his love, that wants to reign.
It is the most beautiful fruit of our living fully the encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist!