The Bread of Self
Blessed, broken, and given
We often hear the parable of the talents interpreted using the modern meaning of the word, as an attribute or skill. God has given us attributes and skills, and will ask for an accounting.
Maybe. What do we know for sure God gives us? Faith, hope, and love to all of Creation. Let’s include stars and slugs in this, although it is possible that it is only humanity about whom one can say, “They know not what they do.”
So how about this: The Holy One gives us all the capacity for faith, hope, and love, and will ask an accounting for what we did with it. Did we do our best to live in it, tend it, nurture its growth? What did it come to?
Sister Wendy Beckett, when writing of the apogee of our religious practice, the Mass, says--Holy Communion energizes everything we do. In its power we are taken into the sacrifice of Jesus, we are able to be broken bread for others to eat, but for that power to be fully active, we must bring to it a mind that has applied itself to understanding what is said in the Bible. Jesus is the Word of God who must animate and make real the written Word of God. . . . If we enter into Holy Communion with an understanding of holy Scriptures, we will accept having the bread of self blessed, broken and given.
We will accept that the bread of self must be--is-- blessed, broken, and given. That is what the self is for. And we are blessed. With the gift of life, and the gifts of faith, hope, and love. This is true for everyone without exception.
The One who loves us blessed us at our beginning. And we have been broken. Also mangled, deformed, despised, and tortured. The One who loves me, broke me.
The One who loves us is giving us to----others, of course. The others already in our lives. We are broken in order to feed whomever we understand to be in our lives. Whoa. And that is only the ones we intend to feed! Only God knows who else is being fed.
The bread of self is blessed, broken, and given. Can you use this thought to understand your past? To inform your future, whatever it turns out to be?