Year A
1 Corinthians 4:6b-15
Psalm 145:17-18.19-20.21 (R.18a)
Luke 6:1-5
The New Bread of the Face
Yesterday we reflected on the need to know ourselves. We realized that when we begin to know ourselves we will know that we are nothing without God. Today with Paul in the first reading telling the Corinthians that he became their father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel and Jesus alluding to the bread of the presence that David and his soldiers went to eat on the Sabbath, we reflect on our call to rest or Salvation.
There is a quote from Saint Thomas Aquinas that what you Love shows who you are. So still on the quest of who we are or knowing ourselves, we are called to reflect on what we love. Without doubt I can say that what we all love or want is rest or Salvation.
After Creation God rested, but what does this mean if not to sustain what He created. Restoration is also geared towards sustaining creation and so Jesus Christ came to restore creation.Thus God's sustenance of creation is fully realized in Christ's restoration of Creation.
Colossians 1:17-20
"He exists before all things and in him all things hold together, and he is the Head of the Body, that is, the Church. He is the Beginning, the first-born from the dead, so that he should be supreme in every way; because God wanted all fullness to be found in him and through him to reconcile all things to him, everything in heaven and everything on earth, by making peace through his death on the cross."
| His sacrifice was thus to restore all things to God, because in him dwells the fullness of God (cf. Colossians 2:9). Today Jesus tells us he is the Lord of the Sabbath. The Sabbath means rest, that means Jesus is the Lord of rest. Isn't it interesting, yesterday we heard humans were to be Lord of the Sea, Land and sky, and we hear today that there is someone who is Lord of rest. Without him, the sustenance of all things will be impossible. |
There is an important sacrifice that was done on the Sabbath, this was the "show bread" or "bread of the presence." For the purpose of this reflection I like the name "The Bread of the Face," because the Hebrew lechem haPānīm, means literally: "Bread of the Faces."
One may ask whose face is this bread supposed to be, and the answer is obviously God's face because on the Sabbath day all things in motion seek rest which is found only in God who does not change.
Both the Sabbath (Exodus 31:16) and the bread of the presence (Leviticus 24:5-6) are everlasting covenant. Jesus fulfils both of them in an interesting way. He brought Salvation to people on the Sabbath day but how he fulfill them so that he becomes our rest is when he instituted the Holy Eucharist.
According to Leviticus 24:5-6, concerning the show bread 12 cakes were made to represent the 12 tribes of Israel and it was prepared a day before the Sabbath so that it will be offered as a sacrifice on the Sabbath, that means the priests will prepare it on Friday evening. According to Exodus 25:29, it was accompanied with wine. Also according to Jewish Tradition, when there is a feast, it was prepared a day before the day of preparation. So in the case of the Passover it will have been prepared on Holy Thursday.
So on Holy Thursday when Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist which is understood when we look at what happened on Good Friday; we find out that the Bread of the Face is Jesus Christ and the Wine, his blood as a new blood of the covenant. It was also on Holy Thursday that Jesus instituted the Holy Orders or Priesthood so that they too will be in his person to continue offering his sacrifice of Thanksgiving to the Father. Thus as Paul became the father of the Corinthians in Christ through the gospel, the Priest have become fathers to us in Christ through the Sacrifice of the Mass and we call them father.
Interestingly is Jesus who is the Lord of rest and hence the perfect image of God who fulfill the Sabbath by resting on the Sabbath day and resurrecting on the first day to usher in new life and hence making the first day the day of all days, the Lord's day. Through Jesus we see God's face and seeing God's face means seeing life and that is Salvation.
Psalm 80:19O LORD God of hosts, restore us; Cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved.
So Jesus is the Lord of rest because he is life and life overcame death on the first day so that all darkness was shattered by his light and Salvation fully restored for the sustenance of creation. Thus by his resurrection, life overcame death and true rest was won for us.
I will like to entreat us to develop the habit of visiting the Lord in the blessed Sacrament and gaze upon the face of the Lord for at least an hour.
By Sylvester Amakye-Quayson
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