On Friday of this week we read JOHN 6:35-39

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“The Lord said to the Jews who believed in him: "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day.”

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Christ recognizes in us some very essential needs. Humans need to eat and we need to drink, if we do not, we die. Consequently, food and water are of great importance in human culture, and we build our lives, in many ways, around the procurement and consumption of food. Think of the central place the daily meal takes in the life of a family.

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God uses this necessity, the very weakness of our mortal nature, that unless we eat and drink, we die, as a means by which we are able to approach more closely to Him, He fills our weakness with His strength. He is the bread of life, and the living water. What our physical food and drink lacks Christ is able to fill, that is, when we eat, we must eat again, and when we drink we become thirsty again. Christ, however, is our source of eternal life and our participation in the “bread of life,” and in “living water” is an eternal one, one that occurs beyond the bounds of time.

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In the Lord’s Prayer we see this duality as well. We pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.” The usual translation of the Greek from Matthew 6: “τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον” There is a bit of a problem, however, with the translation of ἐπιούσιον. This can mean “daily,” however, this is a bit of a redundancy, “give us today our today bread.” The word ἐπιούσιον deals with sufficiency, the bread we pray for is “sufficient for this day,” but it also deals with the future. This is the “bread of the future,” as St. Cyril of Alexandria understands it, that is, the bread of the Kingdom. We are praying, then, at the same time for the bread to sustain us day to day, as well as for the “bread of the Kingdom,” that is, Christ.