Bread of Life

by Sean Innerst

In this series of liturgical Bible studies, we have seen numerous ways in which biblical texts in the liturgy interpret both the mysteries of the liturgy and the biblical texts themselves. It would certainly be surprising if we didn’t find the same kind of pattern evident in the readings for the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (June 17). On this Sunday, we celebrate one of the central mysteries of Catholic life. It is, in fact, an article of faith that particularly distinguishes the Catholic faith from that of our Protestant brothers and sisters who deny the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

That might be surprising to those of us who are accustomed to hearing the words, “This is my body” and “This is my blood” in the Mass. After all, those words in some form are found on the lips of Jesus in all three of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), and are repeated by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11—apparently as an injunction to observe the remembrance of that Last Supper of Jesus in a proper way “when you meet as a church.”

But for Christians who don’t have the liturgy of the Eucharist to interpret those texts for them, it is much easier to impose upon the recorded words of Jesus at the Last Supper a merely metaphorical meaning.

This reinforces the importance to read the Bible—in what we called in the first of this series of articles—its “natural habitat.” The text of the New Testament is a liturgical text. It was written by Christians and probably for Christians who participated in the liturgical life of the primitive Church. Some recent scholarship has suggested that the Gospels were written precisely for presentation in the baptismal liturgies of the early Church. Given that, the appropriate way to read the text is within the context for which it was intended.

This month that context is not only the Eucharist, but a solemn Eucharist that honors its own origins and continuing significance. This month we look at the texts for the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ or Corpus Christi. Christ, who is mystically and substantially present in the consecrated elements of the Eucharistic liturgy, is present as the interpretive key of Genesis 14 in our first reading. The second reading from 1 Corinthians points back to Him as the source of the Eucharist’s institution. In the Gospel reading, Jesus Himself points forward to the Last Supper by a miraculous feeding of a multitude.

Genesis 14:18-20

We cannot glean much from the three brief verses the Lectionary gives us from Genesis 14. We know only that we have a figure named Melchizedek and the familiar Abram, who will later be called Abraham. Melchizedek is described as a king and a priest, who pronounces a blessing over Abram, and blesses God for having given him victory over his enemies. Then our reading ends abruptly.

The liturgical context in which this mysterious reading appears provides insight. Melchizedek, probably a title rather than a name, appears momentarily in this verse of Genesis and disappears. References to him pop up in Psalm 110, which is the responsorial psalm for this liturgy, and in Hebrews. Otherwise, Melchizedek—”righteous king”—moves mysteriously onto the stage of salvation history and just as mysteriously moves off again.

The key to his significance is that he offers a sacrifice of bread and wine. Jesus’ later offering of a sacrifice in bread and wine illumined this short and singular text from the shadowy history of the patriarchal era. Eucharistic Prayer I, sometimes called the Roman Canon, employs the words “Look with favor upon these offerings and accept them as once you accepted . . . the bread and wine offered by your priest Melchizedek.”

The Church’s interest in Melchizedek as a type or prefigurement of Christ, however, doesn’t simply arise as a consequence of the similarity of the two sacrifices. Psalm 110 says, “The Lord has sworn, and he will not repent: ‘You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.’” This phrase, likely to have been a reference to Solomon, the heir of David, was apparently read by messianic Jews of the first century as referring to the coming Messiah.

The author of Hebrews may have been employing a standard Jewish messianic theme when he argued to his readers that Jesus, as Messiah, possessed a priesthood superior and prior to the levitical priesthood, which conducted the Temple rituals in Jerusalem (see Hebrews 7). It is interesting, too, that Melchizedek, the priest-king, ruled in Salem, the ancient name for Jeru-salem, suggesting that the association between Jesus and Melchizedek was messianic, sacrificial, and geographical. Jesus the Messiah, righteous King and Priest, offered a sacrifice in bread and wine in just the place where Melchizedek had done so, which bestowed the blessing of God Most High on Abram at the very dawn of the salvation story. A new dawn has come in Christ, a continual dawn, so that from east to west a perfect offering is made to the Father’s glory. That perfect sacrifice in bread and wine casts a brilliant light upon the shadowy figure of Melchizedek

1 Corinthians 11:23-26 and Sequence

In this reading from St. Paul we see an early example of the Catholic understanding of Tradition. The very word “tradition” comes from the Latin verb tradere, which means “to hand over” or “hand down.” Note that in reference to his early teaching to the Corinthians on the Lord’s institution of the Holy Eucharist, St. Paul uses the phrase “I handed on to you.” This handing on of the content of Revelation is done in the Church’s oral teaching, and one important source of that teaching is the liturgy.

On some special feasts the Church inserts prose or poetic texts that proclaim the faith of the Church about the mystery being celebrated. The Exsultet at the Easter Vigil and the Veni Sancte Spiritus at Pentecost are such texts, often called “Sequences.” We have such a Sequence for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. In one particularly evocative passage the Sequence reads, “Truth the ancient types fulfilling,/ Isaac bound, a victim willing,/ paschal lamb, its life blood spilling,/ manna to the fathers sent.”

Here we have expressed in one brief text a tremendous wealth of teaching. Jesus’ Real Presence in the Eucharist is not the only truth we profess about this mysterious divine gift. In the Eucharist, as the Sequence puts it, “the ancient types” of the offering of Isaac by Abraham, the offering of the paschal or Passover lamb, and God’s 40-year provision of the mysterious bread from heaven called “manna” to the former slaves of Egypt under Moses, are all fulfilled. All these scriptural episodes are latent in the sacramental mysteries we receive. When we come to Mass we are mystically entering into the whole stream of salvation history.

Luke 9:12-17

Why on this feast celebrating the Real Presence does the Church give us an account, not of the Last Supper, but of the multiplication of the loaves and fish? One answer becomes apparent when we come to understand what Luke is up to in telling us about the episode in just the way he does.

The feeding of the five thousand is unique in that it is the only miracle of Jesus that is present in all four of the Gospels. Luke’s is the shortest of the three synoptic versions of the miracle. He excludes the feeding of the four thousand, and much of the other material that precedes and follows this episode in the parallel accounts in Mark and Matthew.

Of all the Gospel writers, Luke has perhaps the greatest interest in meals and the significance of meals.[i] It’s also often recognized that Luke introduces the ministry in Galilee in chapter 4 with Jesus announcing to the assembled synagogue in Nazareth that He is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy of “the acceptable year of the Lord,” a term that was identified with the Jubilee, a time when debts are forgiven and an occasion of bounty for the poor. The messianic expectations of the day included the belief that the Messiah would feed the poor. So when Jesus feeds the five thousand at the culmination of his Galilean ministry in chapter 9, it is as though to say, “I’ve done all that I said I would.”

Joseph Fitzmyer notes that Luke has nestled his account of the feeding of the five thousand between the perplexity of Herod as to who Jesus is in 9:7 (“who is this about whom I hear such things?”) and Peter’s profession of faith in 9:20 (“The Christ of God.”).[ii] Peter seems to answer Herod’s question. He does so after the miracle feeding, perhaps to highlight the recognition of Jesus in “the breaking of bread,” a favorite theme of Luke. In that case, the recognition of Jesus in “the breaking of bread” by Peter would be a foreshadowing of the same kind of recognition in the Emmaus episode after the Resurrection.

Luke also has a pronounced interest in showing how the Church will later continue doing what Jesus began in His ministry. At the very beginning of Acts he writes, “In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day he was taken up.” Everything that follows in Acts shows that what Jesus began in the flesh He continues in the works of the Church. Luke especially stresses in his account of the miracle feeding the intermediary role of the apostles (v. 10) or “the twelve” (v. 12). All three of the synoptics have Jesus giving the blessed and broken bread to the disciples who in turn distribute it to the crowds, but Luke shows them as more engaged in the events leading up to the multiplication. Luke’s use of the term “twelve” in reference to the disciples seems to also be repeated in the “twelve baskets of broken pieces” taken up.

When one takes together this highlighting of the role of “the twelve” with the placement of Peter’s profession of faith in Jesus as a counterpoint to Herod’s earlier perplexity, one gets a sense that Luke is clearly interested in a Gospel that shows the Twelve as the successors of the true messianic bread which discloses Christ when it is broken, and which is given to feed the poor in the kingdom. Luke seems to do this primarily by drawing a direct parallel between the feeding of the five thousand and the breaking of the bread in the Emmaus episode, rather than by a direct connection with the Last Supper. In both places, the miracle feeding and Emmaus, the Eucharistic evocations are clear for those who read these texts in the Eucharistic Church.

At the Last Supper in 22:19, Jesus “gives thanks” (eucharisteo), whereas in 9:16 and 24:30 he “blesses” (eulogeo) the bread. Both the miracle feeding of the five thousand and the appearance in Emmaus evoke the Eucharist, they point to it. But the Last Supper is the Eucharist in Luke. The miracle feeding in our reading for this Solemnity looks forward to it and the Emmaus meal looks back to it. It is significant that the two disciples on their way to Emmaus are leaving Jerusalem and the infant Church when Jesus appears to them. After they recognize Him in the breaking of bread, He disappears and they must return to Jerusalem and the Church to see Him again.

On this Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord, we are invited by this Gospel passage to see Jesus as the Messiah who feeds the poor, and the Church as the continuation of the works of Jesus. Just as Jesus gave the miracle bread He multiplied to the Apostles to distribute, He also gave them His Body and Blood in the Upper Room to distribute to us down through the ages. With that miracle bread par excellence he has fed not merely thousands, but millions!

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