Brothers and sisters

May the Lord give you peace!

What a joy to come here, in this beautiful community of “Lefkosa”. It is nice to come here to visit my sons and daughters…. Yes, the bishop is the father of the community. Some people have difficulty calling me Excellency, Monsignor, because I was chosen by Pope Francis to be bishop when I was here as a priest, a friar. And I would like to tell you that you can continue to call me “father”, I am more of a father now then before . So you can call me: “Father bishop”.

This Sunday the theme that accompanies us is “bread”, with a double reference: in the first reading, from the Book of Exodus, the miracle of the “manna” that rained from heaven. And in the Gospel of John, the chapter on the bread of life (sixth). Yes, brothers and sisters, we need food, material food: which sustains us in our life and spiritual food: which accompanies us on the path towards the Kingdom of God, towards to heaven. For this reason we ask in the prayer of the Our Father: “give us this day our daily bread”.

In the Gospel we find the continuation of the story of the multiplication that we heard last Sunday, where Jesus teaches us, calls us to discover another hunger. And not to remain in the worries of every day. Yes, we must ask for bread, we must work to have bread, but not to live only for bread, not to live only for material things.

Jesus invites us, Jesus reveals to us that He is the bread that becomes nourishment of love to be lived every day. Jesus is our bread, our nourishment. Unfortunately, like the crowd, so too to us, many times, it happens to be just physically present in the celebration of the Holy Mass, but we are distracted, perhaps taken by our thoughts, by ours problems and not really understand what the Eucharist is, what the Eucharistic message transmits to us.

Brothers and sisters, what Jesus asks of us today is to believe in Him as the only true food, and to let ourselves be transformed.

Concretely it means: abandoning the old man, renewing the spirit of our mind and putting on the new man created by God in justice and holiness…

And here I would like to ask a very provocative question: We have the Eucharist… and let’s be careful. The Eucharist does not represent Jesus. The Eucharist is Jesus. One represents someone who is not present. Here is the difference in the pre-existing theology of Catholic theology. Jesus is here. And in the Holy Mass we eat the bread of heaven. And the question: we eat the body of Christ. The body of Christ takes up residence in us. And the question: what changes in our life? Are we bread, the body of Christ in our families, in our studies, in our work? At home are you the body of Christ for your wife? For your children?

And we pray by saying:

“Lord Jesus, satisfy our hunger and our thirst with the Words of eternal life, that only you offer us, giving us the possibility of eating the bread of your Word. May the prayerful encounter with your Word, help us to let your Holy Spirit act within us. Help us so that every day we can renew our spirit and our mind and make our lives a testimony of true justice and holiness. And help us to be witnesses in our families and in the world of your image that of God the Father, the Son, in the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen”.