The Bread of Life

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—That perches in the soul—And sings the tune without the words—And never stops—at all … (Emily Dickinson)

When I was a college freshman the campus where I lived was located very near a large bakery, Mrs. Baird’s, in north Dallas. Every night the enticing smell of fresh baked bread would drift across the campus and into every building and residence hall. On the nights when the aroma was particularly strong you could see scores of students walking up Mockingbird Lane to the company store to purchase the fresh bread. The out-of-town students who didn’t know where to go to buy the bread followed upperclassmen past the bars and package stores and hotels and resturants to Mrs. Baird’s. What drove them to make that long walk was the hope that the bread they sought would measure up to the smell that enticed them to make their journey.

Sometimes we become lost and trapped in the hope that our journey will measure up. We become enticed by other aromas that lead us in other directions, away from Christ. Maybe something else is perched in our souls and the song that it sings is not the tune of hope but of despair.

Hope is what Jesus gives us—the promise of new life in Christ and with God for all eternity. We look to him in the hope that this is all true—in the faith that God would have us believe in Jesus.

In order to believe in Jesus—in order to live in this world experiencing heaven on earth, heaven here and now, all the while waiting for the life yet to come—we eat the bread of life, symbolizing our belief in and devotion to Jesus.

Unlike those freshmen who followed upperclassmen to the bakery, it is Jesus who can give us the bread of life— spiritual life in this world and eternal life in the life yet to come. All we have to do is believe and serve God as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.

Father Mark