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Bread - Food for life.
In homes where sliced bread is always available, or even rolls or other individual portions, “Please pass the bread” means to pass a plate or basket so others make take for themselves whatever they want. Even at tables where there is unsliced bread, it is often placed on a board with a knife so that those who wish can cut off as much as they like. Bread is shared but it is not the same experience as when one person literally breaks bread and hands a piece to someone. The physical gesture of handing to another a portion of food is very meaningful. We consider “hands-on experiences” to be significant and this is one example.
Although we are accustomed to making financial transactions online or by credit card, there are still occasions when we hand money to someone. The cash value of such exchanges is no different between electronic transfers and physically handing the currency to another, but the value of the human interaction is, however slight, an additional reality. We could, for example, imagine one person passing a generous amount of currency to someone as a gift and being able to see the spontaneous response in the other person’s face. If we were to hand over payment of a lost wager on a game, the occasion might contain both humor and a bit of discomfort, but it is a fully human transfer of something more than cash.
Most of us do not consider bread to be any more than a complement to a meal and not at all an essential. As a prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread” is usually seen as a metaphor for whatever is truly essential for life. Food is certainly a requisite, but so are spiritual gifts of love, trust, and hope. Without these, life would be tenuous and unsustainable. However, when we pray “The Lord’s Prayer,” we can be mindful of those who, not just in the past when bread was the dominant staple food item but today have bread as their principle daily ration. Bread has been known as the “staff of life” in the world for a very long time and still is in many places.
The sharing of bread appears in many Gospel stories, where it is handed from one person to another. The most profound of the various “breaking bread” passages are those describing how Jesus, at his last supper in this life, used not only the handing of bread one to another but also eating it, as the living memorial of himself for all who participate in the Eucharist.
Even if we consider bread at table as only an optional side dish, we do well to consider how God can make use of the apparently inconsequential act of the handing and eating of bread as a beautifully mysterious way to gift us with his life-giving presence.
Last Updated 2/15/2025