Daily Meditation: Monday, November 14, 2011

Christ - divine Word and living bread

11/14/2011

The mouth has two important functions: eating and speaking. Food goes in our mouth, and words come out of it. But is there any relationship between food and the word? Yes, there is; we can see this relationship clearly in the figure of Christ. Christ is the Son, the second person of the trinity, the creative Word uttered by the Father. And he manifests also as food, as when Jesus says, ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever.’ Or again, during the last supper, when he gave the bread and wine to his disciples, saying, ‘Take, eat; this is my body… Drink, this is my blood.’ We can even find a passage in the Gospels where bread is clearly identified with the spoken word. When Jesus was hungry after fasting for forty days in the desert, the devil came to tempt him, suggesting he should change stones into bread. But Jesus drove him back, saying, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ On the spiritual plane, the Christ is the Word of God; he is linked to God, just as the spoken word is linked to the person who speaks it. And on the physical plane, the Christ is bread.