BREAD IN THE WILDERNESS

Words of wisdom from Thomas Merton

BREAD IN THE WILDERNESS " The Psalms acquire, for those who know how to enter into them, a surprising depth, a marvelous and inexhaustible actuality. They are bread, miraculously provided by Christ, to feed those who have followed Him into the wilderness. I use this symbol advisedly. The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves usually suggests the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which it foreshadowed: but the reality which nourishes us in the Psalms is the same reality which nourishes us in the Eucharist, though in a far different form. In either case, we are fed by the Word of God. In the Blessed Sacrament, 'His flesh is food indeed.' In the Scriptures, the Word is incarnate not in flesh but in human words. But man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. "