Jesus says, “If you eat this bread you
will live forever” (John 6:51). It is so interesting that he
chooses taste, flavor, and nutrition as the symbol of how life is transferred,
and not intellectual cognition. If you live by the momentary identity that
others give you, that’s what dies when you die, and you’re left with nothing.
Your relative identity passes away, but it is like the painful erasing of an
unwanted tattoo. When Jesus says he’s giving himself to you as the “bread of
life,” he’s saying, as it were, “Find yourself in me, and this will not pass or
change or die. Eat this food as your primary nutrition, and you are
indestructible.” This is your absolute and indestructible identity.
We all slowly learn how to live in what Thomas Merton
would call the True Self—who you are, and always have been, in God. Who you are
in God is who you forever are. In fact, that’s all you are, and it is more than
enough. Everything else is passing away. Reputations, titles, possessions, and
roles do not determine our identity. When I hand out the Eucharistic bread I
love to say to the assembly, “You become what you eat. Come and eat who you
are—forever!” You access Great Truth by absorption and digestion, almost never
by analysis or argumentation.
Richard Rohr
