At the Last Supper, Jesus took the last piece of unleavened bread, a symbol of the Messiah called the afikoman which means “the Coming One”, and said: “this is my body.” He instructed his disciples to eat it “in remembrance of [him]” (Lk. 22:19), that is, with the awareness that the Messianic hope symbolized by this bread was fulfilled in him. He said, “I tell you that I will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God” (Lk. 22:16).
Likewise, he took the fourth and final cup of wine, and said, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Furthermore, he said he would abstain from this cup: “I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in My Father’s kingdom.” (Mt. 26:28-29).
When he is in agony in Gethsemane, he speaks of this cup when he prays, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me.” (Mt. 26:39). Finally, he prays in conclusion, “My Father, if this cup cannot pass unless I drink it, may Your will be done.” (Mt. 26:42). It is clear from this that the fourth cup of our Lord’s Pascha would be his death. By the time of his crucifixion, all his beloved disciples had abandoned him but John and some of the women.
After he rose from the grave, Our Lord’s appearances to his disciples, many of whom had abandoned him, were mysterious. They did not recognize him at first. On the road to Emmaus, there was no recognition on their part until after he explained all of the scriptures to them, and he broke bread with them. “Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus…they had recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread.” (Lk. 24:31, 35). The bread broken here is that bread which he said he would only eat again when it was fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.
Their eyes at last were opened: they realized that Jesus had come into the glory of his Kingdom. “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then to enter His glory?” (Lk. 24:25-26).
Are our eyes opened to the implications of Christ’s resurrection? Do we recognize him in the broken bread?
The afikoman was broken off from the whole loaf, which represented all of Israel, and hidden away. In the same way, Jesus was cut off and afflicted for our sakes, and buried in the grave. The bread of the people of Israel was broken and scattered across many mountaintops (Didache 9:3-4) in exile. But when Jesus was found alive again, the loaf was whole once again.
Now the afikoman was also a substitute for the original paschal lamb whose blood was sprinkled on the doorposts of Israel in the days of the 10th plague in Egypt. Hence, Jesus highlighted himself as the Lamb of God when he said of the afikoman, “This is my body.” When the disciples “recognized him in the breaking of the bread,” then, they also recognized the purpose of Christ’s Passion: to be a new Passover Lamb, whose blood shields the people from heavenly wrath in a new and better exodus, not out of one land into another, but from the dominion of darkness into the Kingdom of the beloved Son (Col. 1:13).
Nor was the Last Supper the first time Jesus spoke of himself as bread, or his blood as a libation. After miraculously feeding thousands with just five loaves of bread, Jesus compared himself to the heavenly manna which sustained Israel in the wilderness in the days of Moses. He made less of this bread and made himself more: “Truly, truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world…I am the bread of life.” (Jn. 6:32-33, 35). He boldly said: “Truly, truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is real food, and My blood is real drink.” (Jn. 6:53-55).
In our Eucharistic celebrations, we often call these things to mind. Often it is the centerpiece of our communal worship of the Risen One — the way the reality of Easter and our Savior’s ever-presence is called to mind in recollection. We take a bit of bread, and a bit of wine, which are called the body and blood of the Lord. What is the ultimate nature of these gifts, according to the words of Christ? For this bread, which he called his flesh, “came down from heaven.” (Jn. 6:58). And yet we know that Jesus of Nazareth did not physically descend from heaven, but was born of Mary on earth. He is not denying this, or claiming to be a celestial phantom. He is revealing a deeper mystery: that the one whose words he was speaking, the Holy Spirit, is the mother who gives birth to children of God such as he — and us, if we indeed are “born from above” by the Spirit. In other words, we may say that it was the descending dove who spoke these words in Jesus, speaking of herself as food from heaven, even as the quail was sent down from heaven to be food for the Israelites in the wilderness of the exodus.
Jesus’ spiritual words here reveal that the flesh of God’s child is spiritual. As nourishment, it is food and meat. “I have meat that you know not of…my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” (Jn. 4:32, 34). That is — Christ’s food was to offer himself as food to all.
And so it is with us: we should recognize ourselves, even as we ought to recognize Jesus, in the breaking of bread.
It is no coincidence that Jesus’ discourse on the heavenly bread followed the miraculous feeding of thousands. This miracle was so spectacular a sign of his Messiahship, “they began to say, ‘Truly this is the Prophet who is to come into the world’…they were about to come and make Him king by force.” (Jn. 6:14-15). And while his teaching excoriates them for their faithlessness — because they afterward come asking for another sign, just as the manna in the wilderness was not enough of a sign for incredulous Israel to put their faith in God — the Messianic import of the miracle is not to be downplayed. The Christ feeds his people — bread from heaven and bread from the earth.
As Christ is, so shall his people be.
Hence, the early church, the people of Christ, met together to break bread daily, “sharing their meals with gladness and sincerity of the heart” (Ac. 2:46). These were called “love feasts” (Jud. 1:12). Catholic apologists point to these as the proof of the Eucharistic celebration’s antiquity. These Eucharistic gatherings, however, were more sumptuous offerings than a wafer and a sip of wine. Clearly, it was enough of a potluck that some were gorging themselves and getting drunk (1 Cor. 11:20f). And this was happening daily. The “daily distribution of food” (Ac. 6:1) was such an enterprise that the apostles had to appoint deacons to “wait tables” so that they wouldn’t be distracted from their work of evangelism (Ac. 6:2).
As Jesus was recognized as Christ by the sign of the loaves and fishes, so also the Church was recognized as the body of Christ by their love feasts. This simple, daily distribution of food was a sign in itself that the Kingdom had come: the hungry were being fed. Such a simple solution puts to shame all the elaborate ways mankind has devised to combat poverty. What “War on Poverty,” after all, has ever been won? “The poor you will have with you always.” (Mt. 26:11).
At the end of the day, natural life depends on food; and the Church addressed this simply by “sharing their meals with gladness and sincerity of heart.”
Our soup kitchens, perhaps, may be the true Eucharistic gatherings.
This was certainly Dorothy Day’s vision. And she did not simply see Christ revealed in those who fed the multitudes; more importantly, she saw him in those being fed: “The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him…Those who cannot see Christ in the poor are atheists indeed.” Hence, she opened her Lower East side home, Mary House, to the poor, and fed them. A chain-smoking laywoman, she followed in the footsteps of many saints who took direct action rather than outsourcing the Christian life to so-called specialists. Under the meager roof of her New York City tenement apartment, the poor “shared their meals with gladness and sincerity of heart.”
In its universality, the love feast exceeds the ancient Passover, even as Jesus is more excellent as Lamb of God than the lamb of Moses. For the Passover meal was restricted only to Israelites: “no foreigner shall eat of it” (Ex. 12:43). But in Christ, God has prepared “for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.” Through the mystery of this universal feast, “he will swallow up…the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.” (Is. 25:6-9).
At the heart of the breaking of bread, then, is the mystery of the universal resurrection: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Cor. 15:22). Hence, all people are beckoned to this great feast of the Risen Christ — to be both fed and food: “Come, gather together for the great supper of God, so that you may eat the flesh of kings and commanders and mighty men, of horses and riders, of everyone slave and free, small and great.” (Rev. 19:17).
It is in the breaking of the bread that we recognize Christ in one another — for the bread is his body, and we are that body (1 Cor. 10:17).
Amen.
The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes (1624-1625), Giovanni Lanfranco (Italian, 1582 - 1647).
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Table of Grace, by Seán McMahon Seán McMahon from the album All Hail King Jesus Christ |
Table of grace
Where we meet face to face
The Lord of all life
Whose blood unifies
In all, we see
The one we must feed
Whom we must clothe
And not leave alone
Like the bread broken and scattered
Like the wine poured out and splattered
We were once one, and will be again
Like the word spoken from silence
Like the spirit descending from highness
We were once one, and will be again
This Holy Week I found myself writing and recording companion songs for the journey, from the Triumphal Entry to the Resurrection. You can find all these brand new songs here:
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All Hail King Jesus Christ, by Seán McMahon Seán McMahon 4 track album |
I invite you to download and listen to my album, out now: “Hymns & Homilies” — an eclectic collection of songs for worship and musical sermons. This is not your grandaddy’s Christian music. Name your price — your support for my work of music ministry is a blessing!
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Hymns and Homilies, by Seán McMahon Seán McMahon 9 track album |
