8th Sunday of Mathew - Our Daily Bread
Behold, I will rain bread from the heavens for you. (Exo 16:4)
Dear Beloved,
Without any doubt the most well known prayer of Christianity is the Lord's Prayer, which we have received directly from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. IN this prayer we ask our Heavenly Father to give us our "daily bread".
The bread, understood as food in general is a necessary part of our existence. Without food man cannot live, his body is not able to sustain its vital functions and eventually dies. However it is important to mention that life does not come from food itself. Food is important and necessary to maintain life, but in itself it is not a source of life. Christ says: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." (Mat 4:4)
Starting from the Eden, Man started convincing himself that through food he can somehow reach the likeness of God, and not through obedience and renunciation. We remember the devil as a snake whispering in his ears, "God knows that in the day you eat of it, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as God, knowing good and evil." (Gen 3:5). Believeing this Man has started forgetting that God is the one and only source of life, and started to be attracted by the material things, like food, that, he hoped, will make him in the end godlike.
I think this concept cannot be better pictured elsewhere but in America. We live in a country of abundance, in a society that throws away enough food that would probably feed a poor country. Food is not a problem anymore here; everyone can go to bed with a full stomach. However, behind the enormous steroid filled chicken, and the gigantically sized fruits, there is a hunger of this society that cannot be quenched by abundance. It is a hunger for a rationale of our existence, for the profound reason of our being.
Without this reason in our lives we can ask ourselves, and rightfully so: why are we born: to grow, to get an education, have jobs, raise children and then loose it all into death. It is indeed illogical. Nothing we strive to gather in this life we can take with us in the grave, so what is the purpose of our lives? A father from Detroit was telling me about a group of teenagers that living a life of abundance, but not seeing the purpose of their lives, they started to commit suicide, to end a life without any apparent meaning to them.
How did we end up here? We give our children the best food in the world: organic milk, proteins, anti-oxidants etc. We say they need calcium for strong bones, phosphorus for the brain and so on. But how many times one thinks of what a child needs from a spiritual perspective? How many of us have thought that the gap in understanding the purpose of life is God the Logos, the Word, the Reason; the only one that can give us our true daily bread that can satisfy our infinite hunger for spirituality, for the love of God.
Like the body needs nutrients, the soul needs its spiritual food. The seed of faith and salvation that was planted in us at Baptism needs water and fertilizers to grow strong and reach the sky.
The food for the soul can be easily found, but the only thing we are asked to do is come and get it. Come to the mother Church and she will give you everything you need. We don't have to do extraordinary things, but we have to be present here, like you are, to get your daily soul bread from the Chalice, from the word of the Gospel, from the Liturgy of the Angels here present with us in this very moment.
Christ in the Gospel today feeds 5000 people with only 5 breads and 2 fish. The 5 loaves of bread represent the five senses of man, symbolizing Christ's body. The two fish are the symbol of life. This is the food that Jesus offers through the hands of the Apostles: I am the Living Bread which came down from Heaven. If anyone eats of this Bread, he shall live forever. [...] He who partakes of My flesh and drinks My blood dwells in Me, and I in him. (Joh 6:51-56)
At the time of the Gospel He sent his disciples, the Apostles, to bring the multiplied food to the people. In the same way today, the bishops and the priests are sent into the world to feed the hungry with the only true food: the Body and Blood of our Lord, the Eucharist!
This is the food we need to feed our children in the first place, this is the food ourselves need to seek before everything else. Christ is the only food that will satisfy our hunger for infinite. Only an infinite can fill another infinite. Nothing material can fill that gap. The Holy Communion, is the only food that is giver of life.
We need to do this as often as we can, but a word of caution. Saint Apostle Paul says: "whoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, he will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord."(1Co 11:27).
Who is therefore worthy for this, who can say I am worthy to receive the Body of Christ? NOBODY! But God is great, God is good and merciful and he does not look at our unworthiness. What he wants from us is different: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, "(Psa 50:17). He wants us to realize our unworthiness when we come in front of Him.
Realizing this one also understands the one cannot come in front of God and receive the Holy Eucharist without having a minimal preparation through prayer, through regular confession, trough fasting and generally by living a good Christian life. Again, these things do not make us worthy, but bring us in a better relationship with God with which we want to enter in Communion. What is the Body of Christ going to give us if we live far from Him, if after taking His Body we go back to our good old material habits and we forget about our spiritual life until next Sunday?
A true Spiritual life needs consistency, a good soul needs cleaning, through Confession and the other Sacraments. We do not come to Christ as a bishop was saying recently like we go to Mc Donald. We need to realize that having the privilege to receive the Body of Christ obligates us to leave a life according to His teachings. We cannot be one with Him through the Eucharist and far from Him trough our actions.
Therefore I applaud all of you that bring your children to communion and allow them grow in Christ from an early age. I applaud all of you that come to receive the Body of Christ, and I ask all of you to take this task seriously by looking into your souls and ask every time: have I done at least the bare minimum to be somewhat worthy to receive You o Lord? Remember your prayers before communion, remember fasting, remember regular confession, and make these parts of your normal spiritual life. Feed your souls with Christ and you shall never be hungry again. Amin