The Bread of Life - Madonna Magazine

Autumn 2015

The Bread of Life

Staff 10 March 2017
Word and Bread in the Mass become one, as at the Last Supper, when all the words of Jesus and all the signs he had performed were condensed into the gesture of breaking the bread and offering the chalice, in anticipation of the sacrifice of the cross, and in those words, 'Take, eat; this is my body … Take, drink; this is my blood.' Pope Francis, May 2014 Celebrating Mass in the Upper Room in Jerusalem last May, Pope Francis spoke of the spiritual life that is given is in the Eucharist the 'bread of the angels that is made bread for us' as Thomas Aquinas' 17th century hymn begins (panis angelicus fit panis hominum). Bread interweaves our lives in a multitude of ways. Putting the word into Google gives more than 320 million results. It is a companion to our daily living as well as part of important celebratory occasions. It is this staple of life that Jesus chose to commemorate his life among us and bring his life to us. Gerard Manley Hopkins translated the great eucharistic hymn of Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote, which rejoiced in the wonderful message of the Incarnation and the Real Presence: Godhead here in hiding Whom I do adore … In the Eucharist, Christ offers us the living bread that gives us life: O thou, our reminder of the Crucified, Living Bread, the life of us for whom he died, Lend this life to me, then; feed and feast my mind, There be thou the sweetness we were meant to find.


 

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