(Audio)
He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger,
and then fed you with manna,
a food unknown to you and your fathers,
in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live,
but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.
He gave bread to show the Israelites that bread was not enough. They were given the manna to teach them how to rely on God, even in the desert. Jesus himself showed that he knew how to rely on his Father for this bread when he said "I have food to eat that you do not know about" (see John 4:32). Jesus could not be tricked by the temptation to make earthly bread an absolute. When tempted, he responded "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (see Matthew 4:4).
The world is not so wise. It can easily by bought for bread. Bread has a limited ability to give life, to prevent starvation. What we fail to realize is that this cycle has limits and that eventually no bread will be enough. We are ready to make a king of anyone who promises to eliminate hunger even if they care nothing for our destiny as embodied spiritual creatures. It was this temptation that made the abuses of communism possible. In religion the temptation is present too. The world rushes to make this Jesus king, the Jesus that is only interested in the satisfying the natural needs and desires of our flesh.
Jesus knows our desires. He knows that we want bread, that it is right that we want bread, but that we want it with a disordered affection. And so he chooses to address himself to this desire of ours. He makes of himself a gift that calls us by our natural desire but which fills us with a supernatural fullness.
"I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world."
The giving of himself in the Eucharist was something even more humble than the incarnation. For in the incarnation there was at least still the parallel of the intellect and will that humans possess, still that analogy that revealed God through the human form of Jesus. But in the Eucharist Jesus became present under the form of bread and wine in a way that was not at all immediately obvious as an analogy for a divine person. He took such a risk in concealing his glory out of love for us. Our primal desire to eat and to stay alive became detached from God as the source of that life. Jesus wanted to reconnect that desire to God in a new and supernatural way.
Just as the living Father sent me
and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on me
will have life because of me.
The manna will eventually run out. Eventually no bread will sustain us when sickness or old age claims us. But if the source of our life is rooted in Jesus himself then nothing and no one can take that life from us.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
What we need is not merely material to be broken down and made part of our bodies in a losing battle against entropy. What we need is a union with a life over which death has no claim, an indestructible life (see Hebrews 7:16). Jesus himself wants to be the food out of which our lives are built. Every meal, especially every sacrificial meal, in all the histories of all the cultures of the world hinted, however vaguely, at the communion that was here intended. The fellowship at table revealed the deeper way in which we are meant to be a part of Jesus, and him a part of us, by our sharing in the one substance of his flesh.
The cup of blessing that we bless,
is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?
The bread that we break,
is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
Because the loaf of bread is one,
we, though many, are one body,
for we all partake of the one loaf.
Let us not just give only lip service to the primacy of the reality that the Eucharist is meant to have in our lives. Let us instead build our lives around it as the the fundamental element, without which we do not have life. Our natural hunger leads us astray at times, but by becoming bread for us, by this appeal to our desire, by his immense humility, he invites us back.
He has granted peace in your borders;
with the best of wheat he fills you.
No comments:
Post a Comment