Feast of Corpus Christi As a child I sang the song “Into My Heart” Into my heart, into my heart. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come in today, come in to stay Come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Our passage this week promises that Jesus will abide in those who “eat his flesh and drink his blood” (Jn 6:56). So inviting him in is an excellent first step. It’s a good lesson for children to sing and remember. The verb here translated abide (meno) occurs 40 times in John and 29 times in the Johannine letters. It means to remain, stay, abide, live, dwell, last, endure, continue. The noun mone means a dwelling place, room or home. (Out of 120 occurrences of the verb meno in the New Testament, 69 come from the Johannine tradition.) John’s Gospel emphasizes that we are to invite Jesus to live in or abide in us. And who is this Jesus we are inviting into our hearts? He is one in whom God dwells. “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works” (Jn 14:10). Jesus is also the one who dwells in God. How are we to respond to this Jesus who lives in God and in whom God lives? We are to invite him “into our hearts,” to live in us. Allowing Jesus to abide in us, recognizing his divine identity and inviting him “into our hearts,” is what we are to do as our part of the relationship. But then John goes on to highlight the bigger picture — that is, as Jesus abides in God, so we already “abide in Jesus.” We live in Jesus’ heart. As Paul tells the Athenians in Acts 17:27-28, “God is not far from each of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being.'” We live in Jesus’ heart and and by sharing his body and blood, we share in his cross and resurrection.