The 43rd Eucharist Congress was held in August 1985 in Nairobi. It was closed by JP II August 18th. One of the talks was given by Mother Teresa of Calcutta. In that talk she told this anecdote: “Until 1973 we had Adoration of the Holy Sacrament once a week after the retreat day. That year a unanimous petition from the sisters came to me: “we want to have Adoration every day!” I played the devil’s advocate and asked: “How could we have daily Adoration if we have a lot of work to do?” But, my sisters insisted, and I liked the idea. So, we began having Adoration every single day. And now, I can sincerely assure you that since then in our community there is a more intimate love toward Jesus, there is more comprehension between the sisters, there is more compassion toward the poor people… and we have doubled the number of vocations.”
I think this is a good example of what Jesus meant when He said: work… for the food that endures for eternal life (Jn 6:27). Why? To answer this question, we can first ask another question, what is life?
Life is an intrinsic principle according to which living creatures perform determined kinds of actions. For example, animals can move locally (they can go from a place to another place) because they have animal life (plants do not have that capacity, they do not have animal life). But, Jesus is not talking about a human life that will not end but rather a new life, a supernatural life.
What is this new life? Precisely this new life gives the capacity to perform kinds of actions that are impossible to do with our human life. Those actions are supernatural actions. That is, we must be conscious that through the Eucharist we have the capacity to perform supernatural actions here on earth and because of this, we must use or follow this supernatural living principle.
As we can have the capacity to think but not actually think; we can also have this new life but not necessarily use it. Just as we need to develop our natural life, so also, we need to develop our supernatural life that means that we must work for this food. As we need to feed the natural life with earthly bread, we also need to feed the supernatural life with the bread of life (Jn 6:35): Jesus Eucharist, that is the food that endures for eternal life.
Going back to Mother Teresa’s sisters, they felt the desire to increase this supernatural life and they wanted to work for that food by adding daily Adoration in order to increase or strengthen the supernatural life they had. As Mother Teresa’s sisters we must be conscious of this supernatural life that Jesus gave us and work for the food that endures it.