"I Want That Bread!"

This past weekend was father-daughter weekend in my dorm, which was a joyful occasion to say the least. My dad and I went on all sorts of adventures around campus and in South Bend, from a stadium tour to meals at town establishments such as JW Chens and Chicory Café. We spent a weekend in gratitude for one another’s company and the company of other dads and daughters. The picture below sums up our time together pretty well:

Joy.

On an unrelated note – or perhaps not so far from the mark, after all – the Eucharist has been on my mind a lot recently. Just before I left home to come back to school for this semester, my parish priest told a fantastic story that highlights the Eucharist in a special way:

Several years ago as Fr. John held up the consecrated host for the assembly to see during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, a four-year-old member of the congregation pointed at the Body of Christ and yelled, “I want that bread!” A comment from a four-year-old such as this one could be rightfully deemed adorable and then written off as a typical outburst from someone who hadn't yet made it to post-Mass coffee and doughnuts. But Fr. John took the child’s comment seriously; the Gospel reading for that day included John 6:51, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever,” and John 6:53: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink of his blood, you have no life in you.” And Fr. John gave this four-year-old girl the benefit of the doubt in assuming her exclamation was founded in her excellent listening to the Gospel.

Fr. John’s faith in one of the youngest actively participating members was well placed. When he approached the child and her mother later to ask about her comment, the girl was eager to find out whether she would get to receive the special bread next time. She couldn’t wait to eat the “living bread,” and didn’t want to lack life because of her inability to receive it. Fr. John, grinning ear to ear I am sure, explained to his young friend that her First Communion would be coming up in a couple years, and she would get to receive the “living bread” then. Until her First Communion, the blessings she received during her Baptism would sustain her. The young parishioner seemed delighted and satisfied by his answer.

What if we all displayed a similar enthusiasm for the Eucharist? What if we, too, could cultivate an attitude and a culture where the comment “I want that bread!” is not an exclamation reserved for children who don’t know any better? What if the lesson to be learned is not the child’s, to be quiet in Mass, but the rest of the congregation’s, to adopt her joyful attitude towards the Eucharist?

The other day, a couple friends and I had an awesome conversation about the Sacraments. One friend explained her approach to the Sacrament of Eucharist: during Communion, she looks around and thinks something along the lines of, “Wow. We are all receiving Jesus right now.” We decided that it would be appropriate to approach one another on Monday mornings (or any time) and excitedly announce: “You’ll never believe what happened to me yesterday! I received the Body of Christ!” In doing this, we decided we would be encouraging a more joyful appreciation for the Eucharist and for Jesus’ real presence in ourselves and in one another.

To me, an image of this treatment of the Eucharist is something like the photo of my dad and I above: joy-filled, with arms outstretched, and in community with one another.

Maybe we, too, will have the courage – or perhaps the reckless enthusiasm – or the love – to shout, “I want that bread!” with the way we live our lives.