“The Father in heaven urges us, as children of heaven, to ask for the bread of heaven. [Christ] himself is the bread who, sown in the Virgin, raised up in the flesh, kneaded in the Passion, baked in the oven of the tomb, reserved in churches, brought to altars, furnishes the faithful each day with food from heaven.” — St. Peter Chrysologus
Jesus taught us to pray by saying, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” In this prayer he teaches us to ask for our daily bread: “give us this day our daily (in Greek, epiousios) bread.” What is our daily bread? Our daily bread is the food we need to sustain us. Without food we cannot live! But it is also more. Epiousios bread means our “supersubstantial” bread, our “supernatural” bread. The poet Raïssa Maritain provactively asks, “Could Jesus, in the impulse of his love, think of the food on which man lives without thinking at the same time of the supreme gift of himself which he came to bestow on us, of the Bread which is his Body?” This is the bread without which we have no life!
LET US PRAY
Heavenly Father, I place my life in your hands, asking you to give me everything that I need. May I accept your Word in faith, always depending on you and the plans you have for me. Give me hunger for true bread, the bread of heaven. Amen.
PRAYER TO THE EUCHARIST
O God, who in this wonderful Sacrament have left us a memorial of your Passion, grant us, we pray, so to revere the sacred mysteries of your Body and Blood that we may always experience in ourselves the fruits of your redemption. Who live and reign with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
-Collect for the Feast of Corpus Christi, composed by St. Thomas Aquinas