“Give us this day our daily bread”.
And what do we think of when repeating this sentence in the Our Father? Do we think about the food we eat or about the Spiritual Bread?
Both are necessary: one keeps our physical life and the other one is our spiritual nourishment.
It is true that God provides material bread to keep the life of our body. But He also provides the Consecrated Host to keep the life of our soul.
Both “breads” come from God. So we cannot be aware only of the food for our body. If this one is important, the other one is much more, because upon receiving it, we receive the Life of God. That Consecrated Host is Christ in His whole human being and His whole Divine Being.
Many are the effects of this Spiritual Bread in our soul. Firstly, it unites us to Christ: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him” (John 6:56). It also leads us to Eternal Life: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever…Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.” (John 6: 51, 54)
But those are not the only wonderful effects of this Spiritual Bread. In addition it
nourishes he soul,
increases Grace,
erases venial sins,
gives us graces to fulfill God’s Will,
to avoid sin,
to strengthen us in temptations,
entices us to love God and neighbor
effects “communion” with Christ and neighbor
makes us similar to Christ, etc.
Isn’t this a wonderful list of benefits? But none of this happens if the person places obstacles to the action of this Sacrament of the Bread of Life, by not being duly prepared. And the better prepared, the more graces are received. Like a glass of water: the fountain is the same, but the amount of water retrieved depends on the size of the glass receiving it.
The Church demands basic conditions: being free of mortal sin, the required fast, being properly dressed, etc. But there are other interior conditions that we tend to overlook. We will see them in future installments.
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