Bread of the Upper Room

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it. Mat. 26:26 In so simple a way the greatest of the Christian sacraments was instituted. How the table became an altar or the bread the “real presence” belongs to the theologian: the bread blest and broken belongs to life.

For whatever love and sacrifice have consecrated is thereafter a sacrament: the outer and evident sign of an inner and spiritual grace. Surely if bread is to become a sacrament, the labor that baked it, the mill which ground the flour, the field which grew the grain, the toil that sowed it, and the rain and sunshine which quickened it should all be sacred. There is in this sacramental conception of all material things and all labor a power, if we will permit it, to make our fields altars, all toil holy, and deliver us from the blindness which finds no sanctity anywhere.

Beneath Jesus’ touch all right ways of life are transformed, our very tools transfigured. Bread lovingly baked and served makes every table an altar.