Wednesday
of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
(Exodus
16:1-5.9-15; Matthew 13:1-9)
Older
Catholics may remember when faith communities experimented with making bread
for Mass. About fifty years ago the
people tried to find ways in which the Eucharistic bread may have more of the
form and taste of daily bread than wafers.
It turned out to be a challenge with the Church insisting that the bread
have no other ingredients than flour and water.
Perhaps because it was just less bother that most communities have since
returned to the custom of using Communion hosts. But one asks today if the trouble was warranted
in the first place. Today’s first
reading indicates that the prototype of the Eucharist was a very strange form
of bread.
God
provided manna for the Israelites as they made their way through the desert
without wheat for bread. No one knows for
sure today exactly what manna was made from.
But the reading indicates that it was somewhat different from regular
bread. Looing at it, the Israelites asked,
“What is this?” which is said to translate the word mana or, better, man
hu in Hebrew.
The
Eucharist is a very different kind of bread.
Rather than nourish the body in any significant way, it builds up the
soul. Received in faith, it prepares us
for eternal life. Man hu: what is
this? It is the bread of our eternal
salvation.
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