Bread and Word

Remember how for forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments. He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that one does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord. 

-Deuteronomy 8:2-3

I first came across this bit of Scriptural gold during senior year of high school. After school one day, I was in the chorus room having a grand old time with my fellow improv-ers during our weekly practice. Across the way, in the band room, my choir's director was practicing some stuff for our all-school Easter mass later in the week. My friend Lisa was cantoring, and the Gospel Acclamation that they were using had a verse that went up pretty high for the solo. Lisa had the range no problem, but singing a high-F for the acclamatory verse was coming off pretty hot. So Marcie and Lisa called me over to try it out. Moral of the story: don't send a soprano to do a tenor's job. We practiced it a few times, and I was all set to acclaim the Gospel at mass: "One does not live on bread alone! But on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God!'


Today, Molly and I had the chance to utilize this beautiful bit of Scripture. We are planning a mass for our fifth-graders at the primary school we're working in. The mass is for the Body and Blood of Christ, so we chose readings in that vein. (Also, the kids make suggestions for the Prayers of the Faithful and Offertory around this intention of the mass.) The Gospel we settled on was "I Am the Bread of Life" from John. In order to give our cantor something extra for her simple ministry of leading the Alleluia, we wanted to include a Gospel Acclamation verse in her little script. This verse is the one I settled on: "One does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."


But the real reason why this verse reentered my prayer mindset is because of a book I've recently taken to simply called, "A Prayer Book for Eucharistic Adoration." While Katherine and I were in Galway, we spent time looking around the cathedral, praying there and going to mass. We also spent time in the bookshop, and I settled on this nice little prayer aid. Katherine offered to get it for me - a truly grace-filled gift. And it is even by a Notre Dame guy and published by Loyola Chicago Press. Needless to say, it was a good call. 


The reason for choosing this book off the many shelves was to restart weekly visits to the Blessed Sacrament. I've gone for three weeks now and prayed with the help of the series of seven visits to the Blessed Sacrament. I was really struck last week by the First Reading in the middle of Day Two's prayers. It was the reading I included at the top of the post from Deuteronomy 8:2-3. The power of that verse I had belted in my head-voice four-and-a-half-years ago echoed anew in the quiet of that chapel. I spent the moments of silent reflection on the way this Old Testament wisdom prefigures the beauty of the Eucharist.


The theme of manna continued through the prayer - the following responsory was "God rained down manna for their food and gave them bread from heaven." The Second Reading for that day's prayer came from St. Ambrose of Milan and talked about the words of Christ. Here's the second half of it:

Perhaps you say, "The bread I have here is ordinary bread." Yes, before the sacramental words are uttered this bread is nothing but bread. But at the consecration the bread becomes the Body of Christ. Let us reason this out. How can something that is bread be the Body of Christ? Well, by what words is the consecration effected, and whose words are they? The words of the Lord Jesus. All that is said before are the words of the priest: praise is offered to God, the prayer is offered up, petitions are made for the people, kings, for all others. But when the moment comes for bringing the most holy sacrament into being, the priest does not use his own words any longer: he uses the words of Christ. Therefore, it is Christ's word that brings the sacrament into being.

So here comes a whole 'nother layer of meaning for our truth from Deuteronomy. One does not live on bread alone; one also needs the Word of God. This begins as a nice way to understand how the Word in the readings and Gospel works together with the Eucharist to nourish us in the mass. St. Ambrose takes it steps further.


We can't live by just eating bread. We need the nourishment of God's Word. How do we get it? Ambrose would surely affirm the Scriptures and the Liturgy of the Word as beautiful media for nourishment. But his words for us here deepen the reflection. We receive bread that is not bread alone; we become able to live on more than bread because that bread is the Word. The bread takes on a different meaning because its inner elements are changed so it becomes the Body of Christ, and this happens because, after a series of prayer that is just the humble "words of the priest [or the Church]," the priest speaks Jesus' words. He prays the words of the Word Made Flesh. The words of the Word make our bread become the Body, the Word Made Flesh.


Christ's words - the Word's words - are what bring the Body of Christ to us. It is by being baptized into the Word, into Christ's death and resurrection, that we become members of the Body of Christ. It is by Christ's words, said by a priest, that Christ comes to be with us in the Eucharist. We do not live by bread alone but by bread that is the Word that comes from the mouth of God -- this is the very essence of what this Old Testament passage to be essential to our beings. It's a gentle irony that we can receive the nourishment that will lead us to eternal life in receiving bread, but it's by the very direction of this passage that this becomes possible.


We cannot live by bread alone. We need each word that comes from God. So, we come together to receive bread. But we receive the bread that comes from the Word, from the mouth of God. We say our Amen to the bread that is broken and shared in remembrance of the One who saved us, using His words - the words of God - to make the bread, at once, both bread and the Word that comes forth from God. I could dance around this until the end of time, and I think I just might.