Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 'B'

Sunday August 13, 2006

Food for the Journey

What would life be like without bread?

One of the more enjoyable experiences of being a pastor is assisting in the preparation of youngsters for the reception of First Holy Communion. About a week before the celebration, first communion candidates and their families would gather in the church for ‘family night.’ Each candidate would come forward with favorite bread and state to the assembly: “My name is ________ and my favorite bread is ______.” For example, “my name is Kenny Lasch and my favorite bread is cinnamon raisin bread.” The best of the breads were home baked. After thirty-six or so presentations, the sanctuary smelled like a bakery.

A brief dialogue with the children included a bit of catechesis on the importance of bread in our lives. Indeed, what would life be like without our ‘favorite bread?’ And what would life be like without the variety of breads that were displayed? We made a special point of the fact that we are like that bread in that we are all very different, one family from another and even within our family, there are unique differences from one member to another.

But somehow, on that evening, when we came together to share this bread, we were all one family—sharing and caring for one another because everyone has a role to play in the human family—in the ‘Church family’—the family of God. We are one in the Jesus bread.

The bread was blessed and shared later in the gym where everyone would gather to assemble a small ‘family’ banner with the name of each candidate. Of course, the youngsters would need a gentle reminder that the sharing of bread was important but the task of banner making belonged to them as well as to mom and dad.

But before we left the church for the making of banners in the gym, I would ask them about the difference between the Jesus bread in Eucharist and ordinary bread?

Of course they had learned along the way that for both tradional and practical reasons, the Eucharist bread is unleavened bread—bread without yeast.. Traditional because Jesus probably used unleavened bread at the Last Supper, which may well have been a Passover meal in which unleavened bread was used to commemorate the time when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. There was no time to wait for the bread to rise. They were people ‘on the run’—on a journey; practical, because unleavened bread lasts longer. There were no artificial preservatives in those days.

This little conversation led to the most important difference between ordinary bread and the Eucharist bread. When we eat and digest ordinary bread, it becomes part of us. But when we eat and digest the Jesus bread during the celebration of the Eucharist—the Lord’s Supper—we become the bread that we eat; we become the “Body of Christ.” No matter what our differences, we are one family, one community in Christ.

And then of course I would have to prepare them for the taste or lack of taste in the little wafer they would receive at their First Communion Mass and so I asked them why the taste doesn’t matter?
Because this bread is food for the journey—food for the soul. This was the whole purpose for the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus.

I think that teaching children about the mysteries of our faith can help us adults to understand them better. Sometimes I think we complicate the simple with complex.

In the first reading today, we heard from exhausted and discouraged Elijah the prophet. He had just come from a very difficult encounter with King Ahab and his ‘house prophets’, who under the influence of his pagan wife, Jezebel, had constructed a shrine to Baal, the pagan god. Elijah was fleeing the wrath of Queen Jezebel who wanted to kill him. So he asks the Lord, “Just let me lie down and die! These people are no better than their ancestors! We’re getting nowhere with them! Let me die!” The Lord had to wake him twice to get him to eat.

I have had some days like that, haven’t you?

And that brings us to the John’s account of Jesus dialogue with the people after the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Jesus said: “I am the bread of life!”

In other words, when Jesus spoke those words at the Last Supper, he wasn’t performing magic. In essence he was saying, “This is my life for you!” Become what you eat—this is food for your journey. This is bread for the good times and bad times. And when he concluded with the words, “Do this in remembrance of me,” he didn’t mean just as a memorial of a past event but as if it were happening all over again.

This bread is different from ordinary bread and different even from the Manna that was provided for the Israelites on their journey in the desert. This bread has an everlasting quality about it that enables us to live forever.

But this is not the end of the story.

The children learn that if they become the bread that they eat, the Body of Christ, then they need to share the bread of their lives with others. They know that this means they must give food to the hungry but they also understand over time that this means caring for their brothers and sisters at home and sending cards to the sick and doing their best not to fight in the play ground. It also means eating the right foods, getting enough sleep and doing their homework so that they can grow strong as faithful members of the family of God. And they learn that just as a good breakfast will help them get through the day or through a difficult game, so too the Jesus’ bread will help them get through the difficult times in life.

And they learn that they need to receive this bread often—certainly every Sunday on the Day of the Lord.

What would life be like without bread? What would life be like without the Jesus Bread?

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