prayer for the day.

Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
(from the liberti Lent & Easter 2012 prayerbook & the Book of Common Prayer)

relfections.

(Jesus) is the bread of life. Whoever eats life cannot die… Go to him and take your fill, for he is the bread of life. Go to him and drink, for he is the spring. Go to him and be enlightened, for he is the light. Go to him and become free, for where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom…

–Ambrose of Milan, from Commentary on Psalm 118

Now Christ is the only food of our soul, and therefore our heavenly Father invites us to Christ, that, refreshed by partaking of him, we may repeatedly gather strength until we shall have reached heavenly immortality.

–John Calvin, from
Institutes of the Christian Religion

The passionately loving Christ, the persecuted Christ, the lonely Christ, the Christ despairing over God’s silence, the Christ who in dying was so totally forsaken, for us and for our sakes, is like the brother or the friend to whom we can confide everything, because he knows everything and has suffered everything that can happen to us- and more.

–Jurgen Moltmann, from the essay
“Prisoner of Hope” from Bread & Wine: Readings for Lent & Easter

more on the why and how of Lent here.