Transcript
Emily: Remember when Jesus went out into the wilderness and spent a long time without food; praying and battling temptation? There’s a moment where He is tempted to turn stones into bread.
Edmund: The Bible says that after Jesus was baptized by John, He was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. There He prayed and fasted for 40 days, and the Bible then says that afterwards…He was hungry.
Emily: Are we sure that every single line of Scripture is inspired by God?
Edmund: Okay, I know it seems obvious and unnecessary to say that Jesus was hungry after not eating for 40 days. But think about why Scripture is mentioning this. We believe Jesus is fully man and fully God. So while He’s fully a human person, we also know He can walk on water and heal people, and He even rises from the dead! So it’s not that crazy to ask after 40 days of not eating: does Jesus get hungry?
Emily: The Scriptures are showing us that Jesus still feels the physical hunger, thirst, and suffering that we feel, even though He’s God. He doesn’t just understand our needs, He has actually felt them, in the exact same way a human person feels the longing for his or her needs to be met.
Edmund: And Jesus also experiences temptation, just like we all do. The devil tempts Jesus in the desert by saying to Him: “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” But Jesus replies, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”
Emily: Bread shows up a lot throughout the Bible. And in this temptation of Jesus—as well as how Jesus teaches us to pray—we’re challenged to think about our needs in a radically different way.
Edmund: When Jesus is asked by the disciples to teach them how to pray, He teaches them the Lord’s Prayer. And in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray “Give us this day our daily bread.” In the first 3 petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, we pray about God’s name, Kingdom, and will. In the next 4 petitions, Jesus invites us to turn to God for all of our needs.
Emily: The Catechism says—in a remarkable line from paragraph 2828 about the phrase “Give us:”—“The trust of children who look to their Father for everything is beautiful.” Praying to God the words “Give us” is an act of child-like trust and faith in God. We’re invited to be like children who ask their father for their needs in loving trust. And we’re taught by Jesus that God can and will take care of us because He loves us as a father.
Edmund: Jesus teaches us to pray “Give us this day our daily bread”, also because it acknowledges that God is a good Father to all people. We pray for “us” and our needs in solidarity with everyone in need.
Emily: But praying for our daily bread also teaches us to think about more than just our material needs. We are created to experience physical hunger, but we’re also created by God with spiritual hunger as well.
Edmund: Whether we know it or not, we experience a deep, spiritual hunger for God, His word, and communion with Him. When Jesus tells the devil that “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God,” He is showing us that there are deeper, more important needs than just physical ones.
Emily: We also can and should hunger for things like justice and peace. We hunger for our physical and spiritual needs to be met, but also the physical and spiritual needs of others. The Catechism says in paragraph 2835: ”For this reason the specifically Christian sense of this fourth petition concerns the Bread of Life: ‘The Word of God accepted in faith, the Body of Christ received in the Eucharist.’”
Edmund: But the Catechism also teaches us there are several layers to the word Jesus chose to describe this bread we are praying for. Jesus taught us to pray for our “daily” bread. And this word in Scripture has more than one meaning. The original word used in Scripture appears nowhere else in the New Testament. It means both the actual day, but it also means more literally “super-essential” bread.
Emily: This is a direct reference to the bread of life, the body of Christ. Jesus is the Word made flesh, and He is the true bread of life given to us in the Eucharist. Without Jesus, without the Eucharist, we have no real life within us.
Edmund: So ultimately, the Eucharist is our true daily bread. God our Father invites us—as His children—to ask Him for our needs. But He knows what we really need better than we do. This is why Jesus teaches us to ask not just for our physical needs, but to ask Him for the bread of heaven. And at Mass, we are fed true food that nourishes us bodily and spiritually. We hear the Word of God and receive the Word made flesh, the bread of life: Jesus Himself.
Emily: The Catechism says “[Christ] himself is the bread who, sown in the Virgin, raised up in the flesh, kneaded in the Passion, baked in the oven of the tomb, reserved in churches, brought to altars, furnishes the faithful each day with food from heaven” (CCC 2837). And, reminded of this, we are invited to turn to God in prayer for *all* of our needs.
