We humans are embodied spiritual beings. Our bodies are pretty obvious, and at times obnoxious. (Just ask those of us who have had an abundance of birthdays to celebrate!) Our spiritual dimension continually invites us to more: more life, more freedom, more love. Our whole life is an ongoing attempt to bring our bodies and our spiritual selves together in some kind of cooperative alliance to promote our total wellbeing.
We know, confirmed by scientific advances, that we do better when we take good care of our body: enough rest, exercise, good nutrition. What about the spiritual dimension of our life? What do we feed our spirit?
Just as with our bodies, if we are not forced into a survival mode, so with our spiritual “life,” we can choose what we take in as nutrition. Do we gorge ourselves on spiritual junk food? Do we try to fill the emptiness within with nourishment that has little, or no, substance? Empty calories that give us the feeling of being full – the illusion of feeling satisfied? With a diet the equivalent of spiritual puffed pork rind crisps, we can become spiritually fat, sluggish, barely responsive to the movements of God in our life. We have filled ourselves with all the right answers, what more could there be?
Of course, we’ve been given the Holy Spirit, and we have been graced with plenty of assets to help us to remain internally mobile, active, attentive – like imagination, curiosity, wonder, an unquenchable thirst to learn and to grow… We deeply desire fullness of life, as much love as we can receive and give, the freedom to choose what is truly good and life-giving for ourselves and for those we share life with. With what might we nurture ourselves for what we truly need?
In the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, there are more than 60 verses around the theme, the Bread of Life. Jesus declares that he, himself, is the Bread of Life (verse 48). He goes on to say that his flesh and his blood are the food that we need and want. He gives himself completely that we might have life in abundance (verses 49-58). But how can we eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood? It’s all symbolized in the Eucharistic Feast.
It begins with our willingness to receive the gift of Jesus’s love – to take it in, to let it become our very own flesh, – the substance of our lives (transubstantiation?). We make ourselves at home in Jesus’ love, Whenever we enter into any communion of love, whenever we really hear and digest the Word of God, whenever we open ourselves to the mutual intimacy and vulnerability of community, whenever we allow anyone and everyone access, through compassion, to our heart, we are consuming the flesh and blood of Jesus. Isn’t this is the daily bread we ask for in the Lord’s Prayer?
Kevin Buckley says:
What a new and unique perspective to have on ‘our daily bread’! We always think of it as our sustenance and in a way that is still true, but at the same time it is always the Eucharist we crave. Thank you for giving me a new take on The Lord’s Prayer.