JESUS: BROKEN BREAD, OFFERED AS NOURISHMENT
Among the many names by which the Eucharist was called, the one that best expresses the meaning and richness of the sacrament is the breaking of the bread. The disciples of Emmaus recognized the Lord “in the breaking of the bread” (Lk 24:35); the community of Jerusalem diligently participates in the catechesis of the apostles and to “the breaking of bread;” at Troas they met “on the first day of the week to break bread” (Acts 20:7). Why were the early Christians so fond of this expression? What memories, what emotions did it arouse in them? The meal of the pious Israelites always started with a blessing on the bread. The head of the family took it in his hands, broke it and offered it to the diners. It could not be eaten before it is being broken and shared with everyone present. Since childhood, Jesus noted Joseph devoutly fulfill this sacred rite every day, and he himself, as an adult, repeated it several times: in Nazareth, when his father passed away and during his public life wherever he was invited at table.
One evening, in Jerusalem, he gave it a new meaning. At the Last Supper, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples saying: “This is me. Take, eat!”, arcane, enigmatic words that the disciples understood only after Easter. At the end of his “day,” the Master had summed up in that gesture his entire history, his whole life given. He had not offered anything but himself. He had given his person as food. Every bit of his existence had been given to satisfy people’s hunger: hunger for God and his word, hunger for the meaning of life, happiness, and love.
Moving in front of the “sheep without a shepherd” he sat down to teach many things: he had broken the bread of the Word (Mk 6:33-34). To those who were hungry for forgiveness he had offered the signs of God’s tenderness.
In Jericho, no one imagined that Zacchaeus was hungry. No one showed himself sensitive to his pleading for understanding and hospitality. No one saw the one who was ashamed to be seen, hidden among the leaves of a sycamore tree, but Jesus. He entered his house and satiated him with love and joy.
At the Eucharistic table, during any celebration, Jesus presents—in the signs of bread—all his life and asks to be eaten.
In the world people “eat.” They struggle to overpower and enslave; they “devour” themselves to hoard the goods and to dominate. One who proves himself the strongest, is this competition for food, is successful. Jesus revolutionized this pre-human way of relating. Instead of “eating” the others, of fighting for the conquest of the kingdoms of this world—as the evil one had suggested to him—he had himself eaten.
It is from this gift of himself as food that the new humanity began. The gesture of putting on a table, in front of a hungry person, a loaf of bread and a cup of wine is a clear invitation not to look at or to contemplate, but to sit down, to take, to eat and to drink. On the altar, the Eucharistic bread is a proposal of life: eating it means to adhere to Jesus, to accept to become with him bread and to offer oneself as food to anyone who is hungry.
“We cannot live without the Lord’s supper.” “Yes, I went to the assembly and celebrated the Lord’s Supper with my brothers and sisters, because I am a Christian.” Uttered by the martyrs of Abitinae, in proconsular Africa, these words reveal the passion with which, from the earliest centuries, Christians have participated in the breaking of bread every Sunday. It was for them an indispensable requirement. They understood that that was the hallmark of the disciples of the Lord Jesus.
To internalize the message, we repeat:
We cannot live without the Lord’s Supper.
CONTINUE READING:
http://www.avona.org/homilies/holy_thursday.pdf
Fr. Franco Pereira, S.D.B.