What does it mean to break bread together? or to share a
cup?
In our reading from Genesis this Sunday, the priest-king
Melchizedek wants to befriend the nomad Abram.
His first step is to bring out
bread and wine. Blessing Abram and
God alike, Melchizedek informs Abram that it is God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, who
graces him. And that relationship, as
Psalm 110 reminds us, is forever – a faithful connection of relationship
established between God and God’s priest-king, the ideal of whom is, of course,
Jesus himself.
Jesus, too, breaks bread with others, participating in
commensality as a way of teaching others to go forth and do the same, to be
bread for one another. He does this
first, in Luke’s Gospel, in the feeding of the five thousand, taking the five loaves and the two fish, saying the blessing over them, breaking
them, and giving them to his
disciples – precisely the order of events we experience in Eucharist, at
Mass. Jesus also breaks bread with his disciples at the Last Supper. In 1 Corinthians, Paul gives the
community of Corinth the formal words of institution that Jesus used there: This is my body that is for
you. Do this in remembrance of me. This cup is the new covenant in my
blood. Do this, as often as you drink
it, in remembrance of me. Christ, Paul suggests, continues to transform us and the world
in the body and blood he shares with us – we are not only remembering the past,
we are experiencing Jesus present with us in the moment, and we are sharing a
hope for the future, a hope that we too will one day be seated at the messianic
banquet. In Eucharist, we are
transformed.
When we participate fully in the Mass, Eucharist gives us grace and
challenges us to go forth with new knowledge from our history to build God’s
kingdom now, with our lives. Everything
we are flows to Eucharist, and
everything we are flows from Eucharist;
Eucharist is where God is most present and real to us as a Christian
community. Sharing the same bread, the
same cup, thus represents a moment of intimacy, the intimacy of Eucharist, the
intimacy of Thanksgiving – and when we are sent forth, transformed, we are to
become what we have received: bread for the world.
This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
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