Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter
(Acts 7:51-8:1A; John 6:30-35)
In the 1970s and 1980s it became fashionable to use homemade
bread for Mass. The bread did not
contain leaven, but it was grainy and chewable. It also looked more like table bread. The custom faded when the Church insisted that
the Eucharistic bread be made of just flour and water. With only these elements it is hard to get anything
but a wafer-like texture. Today’s gospel
indicates that this may be what is desired in bread meant for the Eucharist.
The crowd is asking Jesus for a sign like the manna with which
God miraculously fed the Israelites in the desert. Manna is described in the Bible as a “fine,
flake-like thing like the frost on the ground.”
Its name is derived from the
question the Israelites asked when they first saw it. “¿Man hu?” they said,
which in Hebrew means “¿What is it?” In
offering Jesus’ body in the Eucharist, the Church presents a bread that resembles
manna but provides eternal life rather than physical sustenance.
Receiving Communion weekly or daily, we may take it for
granted. It’s more than a wafer,
nutritious bread, or even the miraculous bread of the desert. It is Christ who gives himself that we may
have eternal life. Our meditation on
this truth should help us overcome the temptation to think less of it.
