The Bread of Heaven

Soul and body: the complete person

So also it is God who gives our life to us, not only the life of our bodies but also the life of our souls.  We are not like one of the lower animals which, so far as we know, are just living bodies.  Nor are we like angels who are spirits without bodies.  But with us our soul and our body together form one complete person, so that without the body, the soul could not lead a full life.  As you know, one day our body which God has given us for our life in this world, will die and our soul will enter the next world without it.  That means that to begin with our life there will be incomplete.  We shall be fully ourselves again only when God gives us that new and glorious body which is called our resurrection body and which will never grow old or die.

Our resurrection body

Like Our Lord’s Resurrection Body before us, it will be fitted for life with God in Heaven, except that, whereas his Risen Body was his earthly Body which changed on Easter Day, our risen body will be new.  So St Paul compares our earthly body to a bare grain of wheat which, when it is sown, is buried in the ground.  And he compares our resurrection body to the new plant which takes its place.  “And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.  But God gives it a body as he has chosen…” (NRSV, 1 Corinthians 15:37,38).

Jesus, the Food of our souls

Now, everything that is alive needs food to make it grow.  Harvest Festival reminds us of the food which our present bodies need.  But since our souls also are alive, they too need food to make them grow.  There is, however, this very important difference: when our bodies grow, they get bigger, but when our souls grow they become more and more like Our Lord, fine and pure and upright (Ephesians 4:13).  And that means that the soul’s only food is Our Lord himself, and he gives himself to us as the Food of our souls in the Holy Communion when we receive him in his own Risen Body in the Blessed Sacrament.  So the Prayer Book Catechism says that the benefit of Holy Communion is the ”strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the Body and Blood of Christ, as our bodies are by the Bread and Wine”. (1)

Preparation for our resurrection body

The Blessed Sacrament, besides feeding our souls, also prepares the way for our resurrection body, as Our Lord himself has told us.  “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give … is my flesh. … Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day” (NRSV, John 6:51,54).

So it is that, side by side with the annual miracle of the harvest by which the grains of wheat become bread for the food of our bodies, there is the weekly and daily miracle of the Eucharist by which the bread becomes Our Lord’s Risen Body for the Food of our souls.