This book, One Bread, One Body, is written to motivate you to go to Mass daily or as often as possible. Our prayer is that you would live the Mass and make our eucharistic Lord the Center of your life.

Jesus proclaimed: "The bread I will give is My flesh, for the life of the world" (Jn 6:51). This is a hard saying, and "the Jews quarreled among themselves" about it (Jn 6:52). "Thereupon Jesus said to them: 'Let Me solemnly assure you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. He who feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has life eternal and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is real food and My blood real drink" (Jn 6:53-55). The Lord has made it very clear that "in the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist 'the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained' " (Catechism, 1374).

If we don't believe the Eucharist is the body and blood of Jesus, Who is God, then we shouldn't trust the Church, which has always taught this. If we don't trust the Church, we have little reason to believe the Bible, for the Bible was compiled, established, and interpreted by the Church. If we don't believe in the Eucharist, the Church, and her Bible, then we have no objective basis for believing in Christianity. We then exist in a subjective, new-age confusion or in the empty hopelessness of agnosticism. Instead, we must believe that the Eucharist is the body and blood of God.

Nihil Obstat:  Reverend Robert L. Hagedorn, December 4, 2001

Imprimatur:  †Most Reverend Carl K. Moeddel, Vicar General and Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, December 10, 2001