I went to church yesterday (Ash Wednesday.) It was raining and just a crummy day, but there were more people in church than I’d seen in a long time. The lines were fairly long to get the ashes and for communion and although it’s really not what I should have been thinking about standing in line, I got to wondering about bread and wine…. why did Jesus choose bread and wine? Why not beer and pretzels, or coffee and donuts?
Well, I guess if you think about it, there probably weren’t any microbreweries or Starbucks around then, and I believe the Last Supper was a Passover meal, and Passover meals featured unleavened bread and wine…. with a sacrificed lamb.
Bread and wine were probably chosen for both practical and symbolic reasons… bread was, and still is, a staple food in Jewish culture. It represented daily sustenance, and pretty much was “the bread of life.” And wine was a regular part of festive meals — it symbolized joy and covenant blessings.
Also, no matter where you lived in those times, bread and wine were part of life — they were common and accessible, so transforming these ordinary things into extraordinary symbols made a statement.
We are told that Jesus is the “Bread of Life,” meaning that just like bread nourishes the body, Jesus nourishes the soul. And wine already had a spiritual symbolism, but Jesus give it deeper meaning by linking it to His sacrificial death.
So I imagine the choice of bread and wine was possibly/probably because they were practical, meaningful and deeply rooted in Jewish religious tradition, and everyday life. Obviously, Jesus gave them more significance by tying them directly to His mission to bring salvation.
And I guess now might be a good time to mention that I learned a new word — transubstantiation. It means the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body off Christ and of the whole substance of wine into the substance of His blood. The change is brought about in the eucharistic prayer through the efficacy of the word of Christ and by the action of the Hold Spirit.
Have a blessed Lent….
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