October 26

am the living bread which has come down from heaven, and which gives life to the world, says the Savior. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever. We then who eat the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ and drink his blood have life within us. This moreover was the only way for the human race, once enslaved by death, to be restored to immortality. And yet this way would have been closed to us if the only-begotten Son, the Word of God, had not made our body his own through a human birth from a woman, and grafted himself onto our nature so as to become one substance with us in an inseparable union. For having united to himself a mortal body, the Word who is God and life raised it from the dead, making it victorious over death and corruption, and by expelling corruption from it, he rendered it immortal and life-giving.

From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.

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