In the Bible, Jesus calls Himself the Bread of Life. He gives his Flesh and Blood, not to temporarily satisfy physical hunger or sustain life in the material world, but as spiritual food that nourishes and strengthens souls for eternity.
Bread is a fundamental food that can represent all nourishment and can even symbolize all material needs. As The Bread of Life, Jesus provides all material and spiritual needs for a person to get to Heaven.
After witnessing Jesus miraculously feed thousands of people with only a few loaves of bread and some fish, and then finding out that He could walk on water, his disciples wondered who Jesus truly was.
Jesus explained that their hunger would only be temporarily satisfied by physical bread, comparing their experience with the Old Testament Israelites who were fed with bread from Heaven, called manna, on their journey to the Promised Land.
Through the intercession of Moses, manna from Heaven fed the Israelites in the desert but they still eventually died. Not simply a new Moses, Jesus now gives Himself as the Bread of Life that allows his disciples to live forever.
Indicating that He is God and making a claim that only God can make, Jesus offers man his flesh to eat and his blood to drink in Holy Communion with Him. Anyone who comes to Jesus will not hunger and whoever believes in Him will not thirst.
In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus taught his disciples to ask for daily bread. The Catholic Church teaches that this daily bread is not simply ordinary bread, but the Body of Christ who is the Bread of Life.
Just as ordinary bread sustains physical life, Jesus gives Himself as food to sustain spiritual life when bread and wine mysteriously become his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist at every Catholic Mass.
Jesus refers to Himself as “The Bread of Life”:
The spiritual meaning of physical hunger:
Nothing in this world can fully satisfy hunger and thirst:
“I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from Heaven so that one may eat it and not die. 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.” The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has Eternal Life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my Flesh is true food, and my Blood is true drink. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in Me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent Me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on Me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from Heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
John 6: 48-58
Bread that is necessary for salvation:
Nourishment for this life and the life to come:
This Sunday’s Gospel is the concluding part and culmination of the discourse given by Jesus in the Synagogue of Capernaum after He had fed thousands of people with five loaves and two fishes the previous day. Jesus reveals the meaning of this miracle, namely that the promised time had come; God the Father, who had fed the Israelites in the desert with manna, now sent Him, the Son, as the true Bread of Life; and this bread is his Flesh, his life, offered in sacrifice for us. It is therefore a question of welcoming Him with faith, not of being shocked by his humanity, and it is about eating his Flesh and drinking his Blood in order to obtain for ourselves the fullness of life.
Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 19 August 2012
Jesus is essential nourishment for eternal life:
The daily bread that sustains souls:
“Daily” (epiousios) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Taken in a temporal sense, this word is a pedagogical repetition 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. Finally in this connection, its heavenly meaning is evident: “this day” is the Day of the Lord, the day of the feast of the Kingdom, anticipated in the Eucharist that is already the foretaste of the Kingdom to come. For this reason it is fitting for the Eucharistic liturgy to be celebrated each day.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2837
The Eucharist is our daily bread. The power belonging to this divine food makes it a bond of union. Its effect is then understood as unity, so that, gathered into his Body and made members of Him, we may become what we receive. .. This also is our daily bread: the readings you hear each day in church and the hymns you hear and sing. All these are necessities for our pilgrimage.
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.
Jesus’ very life as food:
The Bread of Life at Catholic Mass:
Jesus was firm about this strange teaching:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
The most visible sign of what it means to be a Catholic:
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