Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish

FR MICHAEL BIBLICAL IMAGERY

(Fr Michael Boakye Yeboah: Vice Rector of St Gregory Seminary, Kumasi-Ghana)

BREAD

            Bread is a food that cuts across culture, race, color, and nationality. Its religious, social, and economic values far surpass the value of any food. It is not the food of the privileged few nor it is the food of the poor masses. Little is done on advertisement because almost everybody is familiar with it. The best word I would like to link bread with is availability – it is available to all classes of people, cultures, nationalities and religious groups.

            In Catholicism, it is at the center of our spirituality because Jesus referred to himself as the bread of life. Almost everything about Jesus seems to be associated with bread. Among all the famous towns in Palestine, it was the little town of Bethlehem that the Father chose for Jesus to be born in. Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem is symbolic and nuanced a significance in his future ministry. Bethlehem is translated as “the house of bread.” Now Jesus born at the “house of bread” would later referred to himself as the bread of life; indicating his availability to all people who will come to him. Coming to him, Jesus offers his body to his disciples as the food that will bring them to eternal life.

            The mystery of the bread as the body of Christ comes with its own controversy, especially between Jesus and the Jews. Jesus’ conversation with the Jew about the Eucharist explicitly takes its point of departure from the miracle of the manna that God gave to their forefathers. But in the first reading the miraculous food (water from the rock, manna from heaven) was only given to the people because they were nearly dead of hunger and thirst and their only remaining hope for sustenance was God. The first reading says expressly: “God wanted to test you (by showing you your weakness)” before he gave you food and drink. Feeding the people with manna is thus understood as proof that “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” This physical food in the wilderness can only be understood as the Word of God and as a response to man’s need. Only in the wilderness, in the “parched and waterless land”, where man can no longer find any sustenance at all and is completely dependent on God, do the bread from heaven and the Word of God become identical.

            “I am the living bread” is very central in Catholic spirituality. In this, one can see the duality-in-unity of God’s Word and God’s bread. This is completed in today’s Gospel through a much greater miracle, in Jesus Christ, who indicated that he himself is this unity. This unity-distinction of God’s Word remains totally incomprehensible to the disciples, even after the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves that has preceded. Jesus can pass on God’s Word, but how can his flesh and blood be the same as this Word? Jesus gives no explanation of how this miracle is possible; instead he confronts us with the statement: “My flesh is real food and my body is real drink.” Whoever does not accept this, has “no life in him.” When receiving the Eucharist each person must remember that he is falling into the arms of God like someone dying of hunger in the wilderness of this life.

            Teachings that come with mystery take time for full comprehension and this is indicated in the second reading. St. Paul makes the emphatic statement in his letter to the Corinth Church that “Therefore we, many though we are, are one body.” There is more involved here than a common meal that strengthens an existing sympathy for each other. Rather, in an incomprehensible way this one physical body that has now taken on Eucharistic form has the power to incorporate us into itself.

            If Christ is ready to incorporate all to himself, then there should not be any room in the “body of Christ” for racism. In recent weeks, with all the medical warnings and the promotion of social distancing, some people have gone against it to protest against inequalities in society. Please we can make our views heard without breaking the law by looting, stealing, and destroying businesses and properties that some people have used decades to build.

            This is the time that we need to preach and promote oneness in the body of Christ. The dignity of human beings does not rest with the color of his/her skin, his/her race or nationality, or his/her financial or social status. In the past weeks many well-meaning people have commented on the issue of racism but I would like to sign a word of caution; let us not only be emotional on the topic but rather make all efforts on education because no child is born a racist – all learned to be racist through informal and formal education. If Christ has made us all share in his being, let us not try and push others out. In the body of every human being is a likeness of the body of Christ, our bread of life. Jesus Christ has room in himself for every person, so let us learn from him.