Tuesday 23 February 2010

Table of the Word and of the Lord

In the Lord’s prayer we pray that we might be given “our daily bread”. The divine nourishment comes to us in both Word and Sacrament. Unfortunately there are many who though well familiar with the Church’s teaching about our being fed both at the table of God’s word and the table of the Eucharistic banquet, are slow to grasp the sacred nourishing character of the Word of God. In words which were quite strong and somewhat original for his time Abbot Gueranger expressed this truth quite forcefully in a Retreat which he gave to the Seminary students of the Diocese of Le Mans in 1863,

«Do you want to know what the Bible is? If you want to have some idea look at the Tabernacle. What do you see? The Word of God Incarnate under the species of bread and wine as food for our souls. Look now at the Bible; what do you see? The Divine Word, the wisdom of the Father, who speaks to us therein until the end of time. There, He is truly present, a real presence. The Lord gives himself to us under two aspects; he gives us himself to teach us in the Holy Scriptures; he gives us himself to nourish us in the Eucharist. The two mysteries are complementary; the Church does not offer the Holy Sacrifice without the accompaniment of readings drawn from the Old and the New Testament; these readings are designed to indicate this double presence: the real substantial presence in the divine Host, and the presence no less real in the Scriptures.»