Bread
Symbol of spiritual nourishment
July 10th 2013
If you are going for a long walk, you put food in your backpack so that you will be able to eat something and keep walking as long as possible. In the same way, to walk with a firm stride on life’s paths we need to carry provisions, let’s say bread, meaning the truths of the spiritual life.
When the devil came to tempt Jesus by asking him to change stones into bread, Jesus replied, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’, and when the crowd questioned him about his mission, he said, ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever.’ By making the connection between the word of God and the bread from heaven that he had come to make flesh, Jesus was identifying with the cosmic principle of the Christ, the second person of the Trinity, the living Word, the essential substance that must be our nourishment every day if we are to have eternal life.