Breaking open the bread of our lives
Breaking open the bread of our lives – carefully and gently – in the presence of the One who broke open the bread of his life for us.
Then he took a loaf of bread… 
They gave him a piece of broiled fish… 
to us…who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead
Look back…….. Christ has died
What has died in my life? What needs to die? What can I mourn?
Look now……… Christ is risen
What is coming to birth in me now? Where are the signs of new life, new possibilities?
Look up……. All things are in Christ
Where do I feel connected? Where is community or communion happening for me at present?
Look forward……. Christ will come again
Where am I experiencing hope? Where/when do I have as sense of well-being, purpose or value?
Look around……. Christ in friend and stranger
Who is the Other for me? Do I see the Other as nuisance or opportunity, threat or life?
This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.
People are hungry,
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.
Image: For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish they had taken. Luke 5:9, Kirsten Malcolm Berry
Holy Communion- getting in touch with memory and hope – opens up for us the mystery of God’s liberating conversation with the world. This “dialogue of salvation” (Pope Paul VI) is God’s initiative and asks us to be open partners in dialogue with God and with each other. As we listen and respond to God, to each other and to our world, we experience this conversation as liberation, an “exchange of gifts”, (Pope John Paul II) and not merely an exchange of ideas or opinions.
Alexander Schmemann, the Orthodox theologian, said that to be with Jesus “meant a conversion to another reality”. That reality is what is commonly called the sacramental life. Schmemann, in words that are crucial to locking in our understanding of God’s relationship to the world, believed that we have “ceased to see [our] whole life depending on the whole world as a sacrament of communion with God”.
…a light for revelation to the Gentiles 
That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
The images in this post are of the work of Kirsten Malcolm Berry. She says of her work:
My work is drawn from the images of the New Testament. Integrated into each painting is the verse on which it is based, written in Greek. The Greek links viewers to the original form of the text and its unfamiliar script hints at God’s global grace to “every tribe and language.”
The exercise of faith is difficult for those of us who long for perceptible signs of God’s presence. I paint the images of the Bible to help me translate the abstract into the tangible. Through pictures I grasp that the Word indeed became flesh, and in resurrection power is present even now in the Advocate. And is that not him behind the glimmers of new creation we see each day?
As we come to the end of this series on the mystery of the Eucharist, this surprising and joyful flashmob rendition of Jesus is Risen comes to us from a shopping mall in Beirut.
let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Jesus is risen from the dead defeating death with death
and giving life to those in the grave.
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
