The people of Israel know that it is important to celebrate the work God does every day in their lives. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem, goes the refrain of Psalm 147. Your prosperity is God’s gift to you; peace is the sign that God is taking care of you, as God takes care of Moses and the people in the desert. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the people, Remember how for forty years now, the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying. God accompanies them through every difficulty, feeding them with manna, sharing with them his word, for not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. We have Scriptures such as this to help us understand what happened in our past and what could happen in our future; we understand from the stories of the manna in the desert and the water from a rock that God will never abandon us, but will provide us with the merciful care we need.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven, Jesus tells his disciples in John’s Gospel; I am, in other words, that very merciful care you need. Remembering past events into the present moment as he references the manna in the desert, and stating that, whoever eats this bread will live forever, Jesus calls us together in Eucharist and fills us with life, not temporary life, but life eternal. Through our participation in Eucharist, in his death and rising, we are spiritually fed; it is in Eucharist that we find our identity and our union, in the body and blood of Jesus himself. For, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, This cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? This bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? When we share together in Eucharist, we are one in Christ; the Eucharist is our participation in his blood, his death, his resurrection. Community is about unity with; communion is about union with and in. There is no room for division; we, though many, are one body, the Body of Christ, if only we gather to partake of that living bread come down from heaven.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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