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Chapter XII
The bread which we break
We have eaten and drunk in Thy presence. Luke 13, 26.

Normally no day passes without our taking some nourishment. In this day which I am trying to spend with You, Master, I must also put all nourishment, both of soul and body, into relationship with Your person.

The act of taking food is perhaps, of all the acts which were Yours and which remain ours, the most complex and mysterious. The bread which we break and the cup which we drink are both realities and signs to an exceptional degree.

You, O Lord, have chosen these humble, necessary elements of daily life in order to make of them the supports and instruments of Your Presence, with a grace which confers on them a character that is unique among all the elements of matter.

Your disciples are called to eat and drink with You and through You. They are even called to eat and drink You. Food, for them, admits of very distinct and yet connected aspects. There are meals of each day when Your goodness and blessing demand our thanksgiving.

There is the generous gift which must be bestowed on those who have no bread. At another level, there is the participation in Your Last Supper, in the sacrifice of Your Body and Blood. There is the invisible and permanent Presence and Jesus’ efficacious power, the Bread of Life which, independently of every established form, serves as food for souls.

We must not confuse these aspects of our food. And yet we must be aware of their connection and what, in each of them, comes from You.

If we are unaware of these bonds between what is the most humble and what is the most excellent, if we admit separations and cuts between the “eucharists” which, diversely but really, make us communicate with Your Presence, we manifest in this way our lack of understanding of the “breaking of bread,” such as You conceived and willed it and as You practiced it.

To ourselves then is applied what the Gospel says of the disciples after the episode of the multiplication of the five loaves and two fishes: “For they understood not concerning the loaves.”

A man sits down at the table. He arranges a tasty and expensive menu. He gives no thought to those who, outside, are hungry. A rich man, a man filling an important post, takes part in the gathering of the faithful, in the mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ. He receives the sacrament.

Beside him (and the Lord’s Supper is one of the rare occasions when such a juxtaposition is possible), the same food of life is given to a poor man who perhaps does not know how he will eat today or tomorrow and who will leave the Church with the feeling of complete solitude.

The first of these two communicants and many of these who approached the Lord’s communion rail at the same time do not wonder who this poor man is and what his needs are.

Another man will receive Communion, but he will have no idea that this Communion must prolong its effects in the acts of his daily life and that now he cannot act as though he had not received Communion.

Truly, all those present do not understand the “miracle of the loaves.” To them and certainly to me is addressed that statement of Jesus: “Then you shall begin to say: We have eaten and drunk in thy presence . . . And the master of the house shall say to you: I know you not, whence you are.”

There is another statement which is even more formidable: “He that eateth bread with Me shall lift up his heel against Me.”

Behold I am going to take one of my daily meals. Is that a “profane” act, a purely human act? Certainly not. At that precise moment I sit down in the desert place, with the five thousand men whom you bade sit down “by companies upon the green grass.”

I see You taking the loaves and fishes. With You, I look up to heaven, giving thanks to Your Father, to our Father. And I give thanks to You who offer me food, whatever it might be. Not only do I eat in your Presence, but I eat with You. And I also go into that house at Emmaus where You entered to “remain” with Your two disciples.

I am now seated at table with them, with You: “Whilst He was at table with them, He took bread . . .” Lord, grant that I may never take my place at a meal without adoring Your invisible Presence in it, which is at one and the same time that of the host who receives me and that of the host whom I receive.

May Your Presence give inspiration and the tone to all my meals! (The tone? – Oh! preserve me from that table-talk which wounds and stifles the spirit!)

Lord, You could have had manna, more delicious than all earthly food, sent down from heaven to those five thousand men whose hunger You miraculously satisfied.

You could have obtained that bread which You gave them from the flower of the purest wheat. But, in order to perform the miracle, You chose the most simple, the most common matter: “five barley loaves.”

Lord, I do not ask You to lift me up to extraordinary feats of asceticism. I do not seek to regulate my diet in a meticulous way. But I ask You for at least this: every time I have the possibility of choosing, make me choose as my nourishment the poorest and simplest, so that I might eat as You did at Nazareth, as You ate with Your disciples.

Lord Jesus, You fed the five thousand men because You “had compassion on them.” You gave the loaves to Your disciples to distribute to the exhausted multitude.

In the same spirit, You said to us: “When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind.” Have we invited the poor to our meals? If, for independent motives of my will, I could neither invite them nor give them some kind of help (and help is of value only when it really “costs” in some way or another), at least make my thoughts go out to the poor and sick at every meal.

May they implore Your compassion! May they be united to Your compassion! to that compassion which You felt when You multiplied the loaves.

You wanted every feature of the miracle of the loaves to announce and prefigure Your Last Supper.

On these two occasions, You gave thanks, You broke bread and You gave it. O Lord, establish a bond between each one of my “ordinary meals” and the “extraordinary” Supper of the upper room.

I sit down at the table, and I remember the Gospel verse: “When the hour was come, He sat down: and the twelve apostles with Him.” I hear Your other statement too: “With desire I have desired to eat this Pasch with You.”

The episodes of the mystery are living again in the breaking of bread and the pouring of wine, through which You signified and communicated to men your redeeming death. Jesus, may I never get up from the table without secretly recalling the Passion of my Saviour!

Your Church, O Lord, offers us, at its altar rails, a share in the sacrifice of the Cross. Until now I have not mentioned Your Cross. I do not want to separate the mystery of Golgotha from the mystery of the Last Supper.

May each participation in the Eucharist bring me still more than Your real Presence, more than an assurance of pardon! Without disturbing essences, may it make me become the One whom I receive!

Visibly I receive a broken piece of bread. “Jesus took bread . . .and broke it.” Invisibly I become united to the broken and crucified body of my God. Lord destroy the existence of concupiscence and pride in me. O blessed suicide!

The participation in the immolated body of the Saviour plunges a sword into the very depths of my being. The one I was dies. But this death is a new birth, the birth of the one I would like to be and which Jesus wants me to be. And this death makes me enter into the Resurrection of the Christ of glory.

“He gave it to His disciples . . .” I receive, under the species of bread which is given, the body which Jesus gives so that we might eat it. I receive blood which is poured forth for men. Lord, in receiving the “gift,” I “give” myself. Make of my life henceforth a life which is given.

O Jesus, it is not enough for me to be in You, broken and given. I must be distributed and shared. “Jesus took the loaves . . . He distributed to them that were set down.”

Likewise: “And having taken the chalice, He gave thanks and said: Take and divide it among you.” In the multiplication of loaves as in the upper room, O Lord, You want Your gift to be divided. That is to say, there is no room in Your gift for any exclusivism. I do not belong – any more than You do – only to certain ones.

It is possible for me to say to every man and woman (safeguarding the sovereign right of my God): “You are mine. You belong to me. You are for me. You are my servant.” And, to each one, it is my mission to communicate this bread which I have taken. “Take and divide it among you,” “it” being not only the Eucharistic presence and grace but also every presence and every grace received, and finally myself.

“The bread of God is that which cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world . . . I am the bread of life. He that cometh to Me shall not hunger: and he that believeth in Me shall never thirst.”

The bread of our daily meals, the bread which Jesus multiplied for the crowd, the bread which He gave to His disciples the night before His death, and which His Eucharist perpetuates: all these aspects of the bread which we break are unified and surpassed in the Person who is the eternal and invisible bread of life.

For our earthly meals do not last, and our Eucharists themselves will end, but You, O Jesus, the living bread come down from heaven, remain forever. And at each instant of our existence here below as in the future life, it is possible to be fed invisibly by You.

Now already, I ask you if I might taste You without end. Drive my thoughts and emotions into captivity; banish from me not only what is against You, but what is not You.

Be the one and continual food of my soul, across all the visible aspects of the bread which we break every day, several times a day. You who stand at the door and knock, come in. “If any man . . . open to Me the door, I will come in to him and sup with him: and he with Me.”

It is You whom I desire, saying with your disciples: “Lord, give us always this bread.”