Online Edition: July – August 2007
Vol. XIII, No. 5
Give Us This Day Our Daily "Supersubstantial" Bread
By Father Benjamin Reese
The “Our Father” is the most common and the most important prayer in the Christian world. Yet no matter how often we pray it, there remains a greater spiritual depth to be discovered since its very words come from the Son of God and lead us back to Him as our last end.
Indeed, the baptized Christian (in a state of grace) is not merely doing what Jesus taught when he prays the “Our Father”, but because of the sacramental character and the divine indwelling of the Holy Trinity in his soul, Jesus is directing the Christian’s prayer to the Father in the Holy Spirit.
The whole prayer, in a sense, can be understood as a summary of the Gospel and as the perfect prayer in which we are instructed to ask for all we need. Furthermore, this perfect prayer was initially prayed by Christians thrice daily, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and is ideally prayed in a liturgical setting in which we pray in the name of the whole Church, saying Our — not my — Father.
Through divine adoption (or filiation) we enter into the very heart of the prayer of the Man/God Jesus to His heavenly Father. He is the first born and high priest of a new priestly community so this prayer reaches its peak intensity in the Liturgy and especially in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass where the priest in persona Christi [in the person of Christ] offers to the Father the divine victim, the priest’s own prayer, and the sacrifices of the faithful, in perfect thanksgiving for all the benefits which we, His Church, have received.
Our Participation in Christ’s “Yes”
In and through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we have participated in the great sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary — in His resounding “Yes” to the Father, which has undone the sin of the disobedience of Adam and Eve. It would seem that only at the Mass is it truly possible to say, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done”, because at Mass we are all saying it in union with the re-presentation of the Sacrifice of Calvary, where the “Yes” of Jesus is being represented by a priest who is sacramentally ordained to join his own human “yes” and that of the assembled community to the perfect obedience of Jesus on the Cross and in heaven. In his justly famous book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) wrote,
As St. Maximus the Confessor showed so splendidly, the obedience of Jesus’ human will is inserted into the everlasting Yes of the Son to the Father. This “giving” on the part of the Lord, in the passivity of His being crucified, draws the passion of human existence into the action of love, and so it embraces all the dimensions of reality — Body, Soul, Spirit, Logos. Just as the pain of the body is drawn into the pathos of the mind and becomes the Yes of obedience, so time is drawn into what reaches beyond time. The real interior act, though it does not exist without the exterior, transcends time, but since it comes from time, time can again and again be brought into it. That is how we can become contemporary with the past events of salvation. Bernard of Clairvaux has this in mind when he says that the true semel (“once”) bears within itself the semper (“always”). What is perpetual takes in what happens only once. In the Bible the Once for all is emphasized most vigorously in the epistle to the Hebrews, but the careful reader will discover that the point made by St. Bernard expresses its true meaning. The ephapax (“Once for All”) is bound up with the aionios (“everlasting”).1
In this way, by participating in the great obedience of Jesus on the Cross, we are joined to His reparation for the great disobedience of Adam and Eve. We are refusing the temptation of the devil to be like God, deciding what is right and wrong for ourselves. Instead, we are offering the whole of our lives with all its full assent to divinely revealed truth, specifically chosen moral acts, and salvific sacramental graces in union with the perfect offering of Christ in the re-presentation of Calvary at the Sacrifice of the Mass.
By this mystical/sacramental sharing in His obedience to the Father we are thus undeservedly given to eat of the fruit of the supernatural true tree of life, the Body and Blood of Christ, which is the food of everlasting life.
It is no coincidence then that the “Our Father” is said after the consecration and before Holy Communion in all the ancient Eucharistic Liturgies of the Catholic Church, as the Catechism says,
In the Eucharistic Liturgy the Lord’s Prayer appears as the prayer of the whole Church and there reveals its full meaning and efficacy. Placed between the anaphora (the Eucharistic prayer) and the communion, the Lord’s prayer sums up on the one hand all the petitions and intercessions expressed in the movement of the epiclesis and, on the other, knocks at the door of the Banquet of the kingdom that sacramental communion anticipates. (CCC 2770)
Our “Daily Bread?”
But is the Holy Eucharist of the Eucharistic banquet also the daily bread of the “Our Father”? If the “Our Father” is the perfect prayer, which is most perfectly prayed in the context of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, then does it not make sense that the daily bread that we most need and so ask for is the supersubstantial bread of the Holy Eucharist?
It may surprise many Catholics to learn that this indeed is the teaching of the Catholic Church as expressed by the Council of Trent and as re-proposed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, many Protestants who say this prayer daily may be shocked to learn that they are truly praying to receive Holy Communion daily and that this interpretation goes back to very words of Our Lord in the “Our Father”: “Give us this day our daily bread”.
The Greek word here is epiousion, which is a hapax — a word that is only used here and nowhere else in the Greek language — and so presumed to be the Greek equivalent of whatever word Our Lord may have used in Aramaic or Hebrew. Most translate the word as “daily”, and this goes back to the Latin of Saint Jerome, who renders “arton epiousion” as “panis quotidianum”, daily bread, in the Gospel of Luke. However, in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Jerome translates the same words as “panis supersubstantialem”. In other words, Jerome, who realized that this Greek hapax could not be expressed in Latin with both meanings at once, chose to give it one meaning in Matthew — “daily”; and another in Luke — “supersubstantial”, so as to preserve both senses of the word for Latin speaking Christians, albeit in two distinct biblical locations.
We have mostly lost this second original meaning — supersubstantial — and so are usually unaware of this lost Eucharistic connotation in our recitation of the Our Father.
Since Latin also failed to express both meanings at once, Saint Ambrose faced the same problem of expressing both significations of epi-ousion when teaching the “Our Father” to his catechumens in ancient Milan. He asked them why we use the word bread after the consecration since he had previously explained that after the words of the priest it is no longer bread and wine, but the very Body and Blood of Christ.
Consequently, Saint Ambrose seized on the Greek, epiousion of the Our Father, commenting “He (Jesus) called it bread indeed, but He called it epiousion, that is, supersubstantial. It is not the bread that passes into the body but that bread of eternal life, which sustains the substance of our souls. Therefore, in Greek it is called epiousios”.2
This concept of substance (epiousion) in the Holy Eucharist as applied above by Ambrose in De Sacramentis was very similar to the interpretation of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem — supersubstantial food for the soul. Yet in a later quote from De Sacramentis (below), we will see how Saint Ambrose interprets the concept of substance in a new way, which will be crucial for the development of substantial change in the theology of Real Presence. Remember, too that Ambrose was combating Germanic Arianism in his diocese as he sought to defend the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son against the Arians who denied that Jesus was one in substance (homo-ousion) with the Father. Hence, it would seem only natural that the concept of substance or ousia would be in the forefront of his mind as he wrestled with the terminology of the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
As Our Lord Jesus Christ is the true Son, not by grace in the manner of men, but as Son of the substance of the Father, so it is true real flesh as He Himself said which we receive, and His true/real blood is imbibed. But perhaps you might say what the disciples said when they heard Him saying: “Unless one eats my flesh and drinks my Blood, he shall not dwell in me nor have eternal life” — perhaps you might say “How is it true? I see the analogy, but I do not see the true/real blood.” First of all, I [Ambrose] told you of the statement of Christ which acts so that it can change and convert the established species of nature (mutare et convertere genera institute naturae). Then when Christ’s statement is not accepted by His disciples but hearing that He gave His flesh to eat and gave His blood to drink they turned away and only Peter said, “You have the words of eternal life and how can I turn from you?’ Therefore, so that others could say this without the horror of experiencing blood but dwell in saving grace, you receive the sacrament in an analogous experience, but truly the grace and power of its nature. “I am” He declares “the bread of life which comes down from heaven.” But flesh did not come down from heaven, this flesh He acquired on earth out of the Virgin. How then did bread come down from heaven and be living bread? Our Lord Jesus Christ at the same time shares divinity and corporality, and you who partake in this food receive the flesh of His Divine Substance. (Emphasis added.)3
The concept of ousia or substance in regard to the Eucharist seems to be used for the first time by Saint Ambrose in De Sacramentis. Yet this is nothing more than an elaboration by Ambrose of the very term epiousion of Christ in the “Our Father”, rethinking the concept of ousia from the Council of Nicea.
This theology of substantial presence and substantial change will continue to develop in the subsequent centuries. The term substance will officially appear in the oath prescribed to Berengar of Tours by the Council of Rome. (Also known as Berengarius, this eleventh-century theologian maintained that Christ was present in the Eucharist merely as a sign.)
The term transubstantiation will be used for the first time by a theologian named Roland Bandinelli who later became Pope Alexander III (1140-42), and it will be used again by Innocent III in a papal document. The Fourth Lateran Council will formulate it more precisely, and hence it will be demanded of the orthodox by the Profession of Faith at the Council of Lyons. Finally, the meaning of transubstantiation will be fully developed by Saint Thomas Aquinas and enshrined as Catholic dogma at the Council of Trent. Pope Paul VI will strongly insist on the continuing dogmatic value of this term in his encyclical Mysterium Fidei.
The declaration of the Council of Trent about the dogma of transubstantiation seems to be well known, even by many opponents of Catholicism, even if not well understood by them or even by many modern Catholics. It is less well known that the Council of Trent also insisted that the words epi-ousion spoken by Our Lord mean both that the Eucharist is super-substantial bread, and that it should be received daily — in other words the Council of Trent taught both senses of the word as understood by Saint Jerome and Saint Ambrose:
Finally, the holy council with true paternal affection enjoins, exhorts, begs, and entreats through the tender mercy of our God (Lk 1:78) that each and all who are marked by the name of Christian should now, at long last, join together and agree in this sign of unity, this bond of love, this symbol of harmony; and that, mindful of the so great majesty and surpassing love of our lord Jesus Christ, who gave His own dear life as the price of our salvation and His own flesh for us to eat (Jn 6:48-59), they should believe and reverence these sacred mysteries of His body and blood with such constancy and firmness of faith, such dedication of mind, such devotion and worship, that they may be able to receive frequently that supersubstantial bread (Mt 6:11), and that it may be for them truly the life of the soul and the unending health of the mind; thus, strengthened by its force, may they be able after the journey of this wretched pilgrimage to reach the heavenly fatherland, there to eat without veil the same bread of angels (Ps 77:25) which they now eat beneath sacred veils.4
Daily Bread and Daily Communion
Indeed, that Council encouraged all Catholics to attend Mass frequently and to receive Holy Communion whenever they were well disposed to do so, even daily. This teaching was long ignored during the dark years of Jansenism, but many saints struggled to overcome this Jansenistic bias. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, now a Doctor of the Church, was one of the prophets of this return to frequent or daily Communion that was so ardently desired by Our Lord. In a letter to her cousin Marie Guerin, a young woman who confided her scruples about approaching daily Holy Communion, the fifteen-year-old Thérèse wrote:
When the devil has succeeded in keeping a soul from Holy Communion he has gained all his ends … while Jesus weeps!
Remember, little Marie, that this sweet Jesus is there in the Tabernacle expressly for you and you alone. Remember that He burns with desire to enter your heart. Do not listen to Satan. Laugh him to scorn, and go without fear to receive Jesus, the God of peace and love.
“Thérèse thinks all this” — you say — “because she does not know my difficulties.” She does know them, and knows them well; she understands everything, and she tells you confidently that you can go without fear to receive your only true Friend. She, too, has passed through the martyrdom of scruples, but Jesus gave her the grace to receive the Blessed Sacrament always, even when she has imagined that she has committed great sins. I assure you I have found that this is the only means of ridding oneself of the devil. When he sees that he is losing his time he leaves us in peace.…
What does offend Jesus, what wounds Him to the Heart, is want of confidence.
Pray much that the best portion of your life may not be overshadowed by idle fears. We have only life’s brief moments to spend for the glory of God, and well does Satan know it. This is why he employs every ruse to make us consume them in useless labor. Dear Sister, go often to Holy Communion, go very often — that is your one remedy.5
Pope Saint Pius X read this letter of Saint Thérèse to Marie Guerin and declared it “most opportune”.6 Subsequently, he would write Sacra Tridentina in order to oppose the current restrictive theologies of the reception of Holy Communion. Although inspired by great spiritual writers like Thérèse, Saint Pius X was actually hearkening back to the clear words of Jesus and finally applying the great Eucharistic teaching of the Council of Trent that all the faithful should receive the Holy Eucharist frequently and at each Mass they attend,
This wish of the Council fully conforms to that desire wherewith Christ our Lord was inflamed when He instituted this Divine Sacrament. For He Himself, more than once, and in clarity of word, pointed out the necessity of frequently eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood, especially in these words: “This is the bread that has come down from heaven; not as your fathers ate the manna, and died. He who eats this bread shall live forever.” From this comparison of the Food of angels with bread and with manna, it was easily to be understood by His disciples that, as the body is daily nourished with bread, and as the Hebrews were daily fed with manna in the desert, the Christian soul might daily partake of this heavenly bread and be refreshed thereby. Moreover, we are bidden in the Lord’s Prayer to ask for “our daily bread”, which words, the holy Fathers of the Church all but unanimously teach, must be understood not so much that material bread which is the support of the body as the Eucharistic bread which ought to be our daily food.7
Pope Saint Pius X stressed the necessity of daily Communion for all classes of people, including children (Quam Singulari) in their struggle against sin and human frailty, calling daily Communion “the antidote whereby we may be freed from daily faults and be preserved from mortal sin.” According to the Saintly Pope of the Eucharist, the early Christians also daily hastened to the temple and to “the breaking of the bread” (Acts 2:42, 46).
According to Saint Pius X this should be done with due reverence and firm faith, but all that is necessary is that the communicant should be free from mortal sin and approach Our Lord with a right and devout intention. He knew that many would approach with venial sin, but he encouraged them by saying that “it is sufficient that they be free from mortal sin, with the purpose of never sinning in the future.” And with great pastoral wisdom he adds, “if they have this sincere purpose” they will with time and effort “free themselves from venial sins and from all affection thereto.”
Finally, we also have the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which recommends frequent and even daily Communion (CCC 1389) as it continues to interpret the meaning of “daily Bread” in harmony with Trent and Saint Pius X.
“Daily” (epiousios) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Taken in a temporal sense, this word is a pedagogical repletion of “this day,” to confirm us in trust “without reservation.” Taken in the qualitative sense, it signifies what is necessary for life, and more broadly every good thing sufficient for subsistence. Taken literally (epi-ousios: “super-essential”), it refers directly to the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the “medicine of immortality,” without which we have no life within us. (CCC 2837)
What would happen if… ?
As the Church enters this new millennium, with its all its challenges and possibilities for a new evangelization, is there any greater hope for the triumph of the faith than can be found in the devout daily celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?
As Pope Benedict writes in Sacramentum Caritatis,
“The mystery of faith!” With these words, spoken immediately after the words of consecration, the priest proclaims the mystery being celebrated and expresses his wonder before the substantial change of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus, a reality which passes all human understanding. The Eucharist is a “mystery of faith” par excellence: “the sum and summary of our faith”. The Church’s faith is essentially a Eucharistic faith, and it is especially nourished at the table of the Eucharist. Faith and the sacraments are two complementary aspects of ecclesial life. Awakened by the preaching of God’s word, faith is nourished and grows in the grace-filled encounter with the Risen Lord which takes place in the sacraments: “faith is expressed in the rite, while the rite reinforces and strengthens faith.” For this reason, the Sacrament of the Altar is always at the heart of the Church’s life: “thanks to Eucharist, the Church is reborn ever anew!” The more lively the Eucharistic faith of the People of God, the deeper is its sharing in ecclesial life in steadfast commitment to the mission entrusted by Christ to His disciples. The Church’s very history bears witness to this. Every great reform has in some way been linked to the rediscovery of belief in the Lord’s Eucharistic presence among His people. (Emphasis added.)8
Of course, what is necessary for this Eucharistic renewal to come about is faith, and faith comes by hearing. But who will hear if the message is not powerfully proclaimed by the Church’s preachers?
First of all, bishops and priests need to strengthen their own belief by fervent daily Mass and Holy Communion, linked with a daily Eucharistic Holy Hour, the frequent reception of the Sacrament of Penance, and the complete avoidance of even venial sin.
Then we priests must study the Scriptures, the Fathers of the Church, Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Councils, especially Trent (Sessions 13, 21, and 22) and Vatican II (Sacrosanctum Concilium). It is also inspiring to read the documents of the holy successors of Saint Pius X, such as Mediator Dei by Pope Pius XII, Mysterium Fidei by Pope Paul VI, and Ecclesia de Eucharistia and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1322-1419) by Pope John Paul II. Thus prepared, our fervent and informed preaching will certainly strengthen the faith of our people and almost “compel” them out of love to attend daily Mass and receive Holy Communion worthily.
What greater plan for Christian renewal could be conceived than is already expressed in the words, “Give us this day our daily Bread?” If all the Christians in the world (including the Orthodox and converted Protestants) really understood and lived out this petition by attending daily Mass (or Divine Liturgy), hence receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord frequently or even daily, what a revolution of Divine Love would be unleashed!
Can we even imagine the power of one billion Holy Communions received devoutly and with a right intention on a daily basis? Not only would mortal sin cease, but even venial sins would gradually be extinguished and the world would see how much we love God and each other. Truly, in becoming one with Our Lord and God in Holy Communion, the poor would be fed, as we shared both the Heavenly bread and our earthly bread with them. The Church would become once again a school of saints, and the increase of consecrated vocations and the flourishing of family life would finally usher in the renewal so long desired by the Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council. Furthermore, this example of Christians would be so persuasive that many non-Christians would be prompted to come to faith in Christ, and the Holy Eucharist. (We recall the Fatima messages with their rich Eucharistic content, and Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament!)
With God all things are possible! Daily we earnestly pray, “Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be Done” and so we must believe that God’s Kingdom on earth, a kingdom always linked to His Cross, would be the real result of that mysterious petition of the Our Father: Give us this day our daily supersubstantial bread.
Notes
1 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 56.
2 Saint Ambrose, De Sacramentis, 5.4.24; English translation from The Fathers of the Church, Saint Ambrose (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 1963).
3 Ego sum, inquit, panis vivus, qui de caelo descendi. Sed caro non descendit e caelo, hoc est carnem in terries adsumpsit ex virgine. Quomodo ergo desccendit panis et caelo et panis vivus? Quia idem dominus noster Iesus Christus consors est et divinitatis et Corporis, et tu, qui accipis carnem, divinae eius substantiae in illo participaris alimento. Saint Ambrose of Milan, De Sacramentis 6:1.1-4.
4 The Council of Trent, “Session 13, Decree on the most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist” in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. 2, English ed. Norman P. Tanner, S.J. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 697.
5 Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, “Letters to her Cousin Marie Guerin, in Soeur Therese of Lisieux, The Little Flower of Jesus. (New York: P.J. Kenedy and Sons, 1912) 299-300.
6 Ibid., editor’s note, p. 299.
7 Saint Pius X, Sacra tridentina, “On Frequent and Daily Reception of Holy Communion”, Vatican official website on the teaching of Saint Pius X at www.vatican.va (April 5, 2007).
8 Pope Benedict XVI, post-Synodal apostolic exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis.
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Father Benjamin Reese was ordained in 1991 for the diocese of Peoria. He has served as a pastor in the dioceses of Peoria and Rapid City, and is currently working on a doctorate at the Liturgical Institute of the University of St. Mary of the Lake, Chicago. He is a member the Apostles of Jesus Christ, Priest and Victim, a new society established with the permission of Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria and blessing of Chicago Cardinal Francis George. Its three members live and work at St. John Vianney Parish in Northlake, Illinois.
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