Bread for the Cosmos

Thursday, Third Week of Easter

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my Flesh for the life of the world.”
—John 6:51

What does it mean to eat the bread that is Christ?

Eating is the most common and ordinary of biological activities, tied to the whole messy process of digestion, and the deeply mysterious process of cell development, growth, and reproduction that sustains our existence in the fleshy forms of our bodies. When we eat, we enter into the most vivid example of our physical interconnectedness. We literally are what we eat. Cosmologists tell us that our bodies and all physical matter – not only the food we take, but also the gasses and liquids we need for survival, and all other substances in the universe – originated from the infinitesimally tiny ball of cram-packed atoms that exploded at the beginning of the universe.

It was into this matter that the Word became “flesh” (sarx in Greek, which as theologian Elizabeth Johnson points out, means something more akin to matter than actual human flesh, but human flesh is nevertheless sarx also). When God entered into the human experience via Jesus, all divinity identified itself completely with the very cosmos and in Christ’s resurrection it is not just humanity that is saved, redeemed, and restored, but the entire cosmos – sarx itself – as well.

The Incarnation was not simply an historical event in time. Through the miracle of Eucharist and the sacramental nature of the post-Easter universe, we continue to bask in the miracle of the divine-cosmic connection. When we eat Living Bread, we are made one with God and the entire scope of physical existence. All separation and alienation –from God, from each other, and from the very Earth itself – has been healed.

Bread of Life, fill me physically, intellectually, and spiritually. Help me to see your body – and my body – in everything I touch and perceive. Amen.