The Bread of Life

The wheat was one of the main crops in the world of the Bible. With wheat flour and baked a bread in the wilderness. Fifty days after Easter on the feast of the "7 weeks" (Shavuot or Pentecost was the feast of the harvest maturity. After the first day of Pesach (Passover) is cutting off the ears of new moms, they are tied up and taken to the temple. From that moment starts the account that leads to the feast of Pentecost. The ripe harvest fields symbolize the well-being. The harvest represents the fullness of the times and the trial. The seeds that grow represent the power of the Word of God at work in our lives. Next to the theme of the wheat is obviously the issue of bread. We find the term "bread" from the third chapter of Genesis: in the story of the fall. God said to the man: "With fatigue out of the soil food, all the days of your life" as well as "You will earn your bread by the sweat of your brow" (Gen 3, 17 and 19). The human being has the obligation to eat the fruits of their labor. The "bread" becomes the symbol of the work of the man, as the expression, during the offertory in the Eucharistic liturgy: "the fruit of the earth and the work of man."

In Genesis are usually men who cultivate the land and women who make the bread. We see Sarah, the wife of Abraham, knead the bread, as all the women of this epoch (Gen 18.6). Little by little, the baker was developed as evidenced by the book of the prophet Jeremiah (Jer 37.21). The Bread, a basic element of everyday life, is transformed from the first Passover in essential support of the liturgy. In fact, before fleeing to Egypt, the Hebrew people took the foresight to prepare the "bread". But the events were precipitated and prevented the earth rise and that non-fermented bread, unleavened, symbolize then the liberation, the strength and the quickness with which God delivers His people. The gift of the manna in the desert will strengthen that symbol of salvation.

In fact, the "mana" is similar to the "unleavened bread". No one knows what it is, but "comes down from heaven," according to the biblical expression, is a heavenly character that earned him the name of "bread of angels". It is above all a free gift that comes from God. Referring to the bread of the flight into Egypt and the mana; the Jewish Passover celebration (and then the Christian liturgy) uses the unleavened bread as one of the essential elements of the celebration. In the interior of the first Sanctuary, the Meeting Tent in the wilderness, the bread of the offering, on a wooden table covered with gold. They were called literally the "loaves of the face" because they were designed personally to God. Little by little, the unleavened bread" is perceived as more "pure", more "holy" that the bread. The yeast has a positive sense of ferment that lifts the earth (Mt 13.33) but also develops the symbol of the yeast as a sign of the lie, of the old, because the fermentation is done with a bit of mass of the previous day that was in a process of decomposition. "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod!" (Mk 8.15), recommended by Jesus to his disciples. Paul also return to the symbolism of the old leaven (1Cor 5,6-8) as opposed to the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Deuteronomy 8: 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey,