Bread
I’ve been once again relearning one of the things I am now resigned to the fact that I will always be learning: that God Himself is the gift, not the things I think I want Him to do for me or give me. When I realize this is the lesson of the season of life that I’m in, I come back to a section of John 6. A few years ago during a difficult time I was praying, struggling with God about His goodness and what I felt to be His cruelty in not giving me what I wanted at the time, and the phrase “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness” popped into my mind. I couldn’t remember the context, so I looked it up and found it was from John 6.
It had been ages since I had read that passage, and I’d forgotten a lot of it, so when the people in it were asking Jesus for signs to prove His worthiness of their belief in Him, I felt myself in that crowd, removed by a couple thousand years but coming to Christ with the same complaint. As they reminded Him of how generations before them had seen the miracle of the manna in the desert, I reminded Him of what I also felt I was owed. Christ then tells them about the life-giving Bread from heaven, and they reply “Lord, give us this bread always.”
Christ’s reply “I am the Bread…” shot through me, one of the gentlest but strongest rebukes I’d ever experienced, and I wept. Why do I always want the Bread to be something other than Him? Why do I always come to Him with my complaints and desires instead of coming to Him for Him? He’d been always, every moment offering me the fullness of Himself, and I’d been saying “I want something else.”
I was rereading that passage recently, needing to be reminded of its truth, and I was struck by how Jesus also talks about His own will and the will of the Father and saw a footnote about the Sixth Ecumenical Council saying that since Christ had two natures, He also had two wills, but His two wills didn’t work against each other. His human will follows His divine one, a sweet reminder to me that I also have two wills working in me, and that’s ok. I want my own way, but there is also a will in me being shaped by my life in Christ. This is human. I may not be where I want to be in desiring Him more than what I want, but I can simply let this humble me and offer it to Him.
We are approaching Christmas, the Feast of the Nativity of Christ, and there is a sweetness in relearning these lessons in this season that approaches the mystery of the Incarnation with joyful anticipation. No matter what we are going through, Christ is always, at every moment offering Himself to us. He is the Bread of Life, the greatest sign of God’s love for us and goodness to us. Christ is Born!
“On this day the Virgin cometh to a cave to give birth to
God the Word ineffable,
Who was before all the ages.
Dance for joy, O earth, on hearing
the gladsome tidings; with the Angels and the shepherds now glorify Him
Who is willing to be gazed on as a young Child
Who before the ages is God.”
