Friends, welcome to The Book of Common Words, where we explore the Christian spirituality of being human through poetry and prose about my life, art, and the Christian faith. I’m your writer, Aaron. This publication is 100% reader supported. Thanks for joining me in this exploration.
There is this song we sing in my church right before we receive the Eucharist. It’s a call and response between the cantor and the congregation. The congregations part is, “Be known to us, Lord Jesus, in the breaking of the bread.” It’s called a fraction anthem because we sing it as the breaking of the bread, the fracturing of the loaf1 for the distribution of the bread to the people.
Be known to us in the breaking of the bread.
I think about that phrase a lot.
This week’s gospel passage2 tells us the famous story about Thomas doubting the witnessing of Jesus by the rest of the eleven and demanding proof before he could believe that Jesus had come back from the dead with a flesh and blood body. He needed to touch the wounds specifically before he would believe.
Thomas needed to touch the wounds.
A couple verses before Thomas’ demand for proof, when Jesus appeared the the other disciples in that locked upper room, it says, “…Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” What is striking to me is this: Jesus showed the disciples his wounded hands and his pierced side AND THEN they rejoiced at seeing him. They rejoiced after they say his broken body, his pierced hands, his gashed side.
Something about his wounds identified Jesus to the disciples that knew him, walked with him, lived, ate, and prayed3 with him for three years. Just like Mary didn’t recognize Jesus in the garden until he spoke her name and the disciples in Emmaus only realized it was Jesus burning their hearts after he gave thanks and broke bread, the disciples only rejoiced at seeing Jesus after they saw his hands and side.
Maybe Jesus was showing them he wasn’t a ghost. Maybe they needed reassurance that it was really Jesus appearing among them in a locked room. There seems to be something about the resurrected Jesus that makes him unrecognizable4 to those that knew him pre-crucifixion.
But they knew Jesus by his wounds.
Thomas however, didn’t believe5.
I get that Thomas.
I’m having a hard time believing lately.
It just seems so absurd. A God who created something so precise and as beautiful as everything and then on this one little pocket of the cosmos he put some crown of creation6. And that crowning achievement messed the whole thing up. We know this creation story isn’t literal. there are too many plot holes. So it’s some metaphor. And if it’s a metaphor, why aren’t the other “God movements” recorded by ancient people (people who were just trying to make sense of the world around them) metaphors, including the resurrection. And if the resurrection is a metaphor, then the second coming is too, and if the second coming is a metaphor there isn’t any hope that all will be well and oh look I’ve spiraled into the dark place.
Ya, I’m struggling lately.
I want to believe, trust, have faith… I just don’t right now.
I have this belief that Jesus is faithful even when we’re not—or can’t be—and times like this when I doubt the whole Christianity thing all together, I hold that belief in a paradoxical tension with the seeming absurdity of a Christian faith7.
Yet, even when I don’t believe, I keep my rosary in my pocket, wear my religious medals8, pray with my church every Sunday, and (most importantly) I go forward and receive the Eucharist. Eucharist is a sacred event for me, even—perhaps especially—when I have trouble believing that it truly means anything real. It’s more than just bread and wine; it’s the real presence of Jesus offering himself to me as Spiritual food in bodily form. It’s a way to ingest grace, acknowledge there are mysteries to the faith that I can’t rationally explain, and a way to align myself with the catholic9 church invisible throughout time and space, placing me among the faithful even when I am faithless.
One key aspect of the Eucharist is that it is broken by the priest in front the congregation. It is blessed, asking God to, “send your Holy Spirit upon these gifts that they may be the Sacrament of the Body of Christ and his Blood of the new Covenant.”10 Afterwards we pray the Lord’s Prayer together, many voices praying as one. Then the priest holds aloft the consecrated bread, and breaks it. Silence follows. The priest breaks the silence with these words, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” And the people respond, “Therefore let us keep the feast.”11
We can only see that Christ is our Passover after his body is broken in front of us.
We can only receive the gifts of God for the people of God only after we can see that is is Jesus at the table for us to take part in. This breaking of the bread is the closest thing to a cure for my unbelief as there could ever be. There’s something about seeing Jesus broken for me, for us, for us all that brings me home.
It was probably the same for Thomas. Seeing the broken, risen Jesus not only solidified his belief, it restored his hope. I think the crucifixion snuffed out all hope Thomas had that Jesus was Lord and God. Thomas who had been all in, Thomas who had been resigned to die with Christ12, Thomas who believed was crushed by the crucifixion. Witnessing for himself this risen Jesus who carried in himself the brokenness of the cross restored his hope, and he cried out, “My Lord and my God.”
Thomas was restored to belief by seeing a broken Jesus.
Maybe I will be too. Maybe at that alter as Eucharist is prepared, as the body of Christ is broken in front of me again and again, maybe that will be enough to restore me to belief. Maybe receiving the fractured body as the bread of heaven and the spilt blood as the cup of salvation will be enough to bring my belief back to life.
Be known to us Lord Jesus in the breaking of the bread.
- Read, “large wafer.” While I understand some of the practical and theological whys behind using the wafers as the host (preventing crumbs of the body of Jesus getting all over being a big one), I miss the days of my communion experience where people would come and tear off a chunk of one loaf of bread to partake. The pastor once said, “If you need a bit more Jesus today, tear yourself off a bigger piece.” Theologically suspect yet pastorally true. ↩︎
- John 20.19-31 ↩︎
- Except when they didn’t. ↩︎
- Maybe it did have something to do with his actual appearance. I mean, after all Jesus didn’t have anything physically that would draw us to him according to the prophet Isaiah. ↩︎
- Yet. ↩︎
- Humanity was created after the rest of creation was formed and filled. In fact, humanity represented all of creation because humanity was created by being formed and filled. Only after Humans were created did God call the created order “very good.” There’s a whole theological thing I could get into here, except I’m not about to write another essay in the footnotes. Another time. ↩︎
- Lord, I (think I) believe. Help my (seemingly rational) unbelief. ↩︎
- I keep a St. Benedict medal, a Sacred Heart medal, and a Holy Trinity Medal around my neck most all the time. They help me remember to orient myself towards God and my neighbor and away from evil in my decisions and actions. There’s nothing magic about them (unless there is), they’re just tools to help me remember and to pray. ↩︎
- Universal. ↩︎
- From Eucharistic Prayer B in the Book of Common Prayer. ↩︎
- The whole eucharistic service is fascinating in it’s symbolism. We literally walk through the last days of Jesus’s life every time we celebrate it. We hear the institution from the last supper, see Christ broken for us like Good Friday, keep silence like Holy Saturday, then we see Christ, risen for us giving himself to us as we receive him into ourselves. It’s really beautiful. ↩︎
- John 11.16 ↩︎
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