Poetry
Richards, Marilee
are steadily eroded, but that somehow I am diminished; sometimes I feel myself disappearing. How can I hope to achieve any of the serenity I crave, the wholeness I long for, in the midst of such...
...Miracle indeed...
...The perfect unblemished circle of the host was broken...
...A feast diminished, reduced to crumbs that might be measured out in coffeespoons...
...My life is like that," I realized...
...But what I realized recently for the first time was that by dividing, breaking up, and distributing that hastily gathered food, Jesus--so quietly, so casually--performed a miracle not of division but of multiplication...
...All that remained of its original integrity was a heap of fragments on the plate...
...A family meal is at the center of the sacrament--bread broken, wine poured out...
...wholeness shattered...
...The moments of Consecration and Communion are usually especially powerful...
...But all at once, in my fatigue, it was not the Communion-bread shared in joyful company--that spoke to my condition, but the fraction: bread broken...
...fragmenting only fractures...
...When bread is broken in the sacrament, its strength is not diminished...
...Entropy rules...
...the wholeness of the host reduced to as many fragments as are required 292: Commonweal...
...Perhaps it is the endless shopping-cooking-serving labor of feeding my family that so draws me to the stories of Jesus feeding people...
...At any rate, it was at the Eucharist that an insight was given me that may help in my struggle against the entropic forces that regularly disintegrate my life...
...he difference, of course, between the fraction of the host and the fraction of my days, is the difference between Christ's feeding of the multitude (by a miraculous multiplication) and my own efforts (by laborious division) to nurture and hold together a family and a life...
...How can I hope to achieve any of the serenity I crave, the wholeness I long for, in the midst of such tyrannous confusion...
...I would never say that the tiny fragment of the host I receive in Communion is any less "profitable for my salvation" than the entire unbroken whole would be...
...I was particularly struck by the account (Matt...
...The gift of sustenance was not diminished but increased...
...As I watched, the priest cast a practiced eye over the congregation, and proceeded to break the consecrated wafer into a corresponding number of pieces...
...First in half, then in half again, and then continuously divided, broken, fragmented, until it was reduced almost to crumbs...
...14:13-21) of Jesus feeding "the great throng" that had "followed him on foot from the towns...
...The bread and the cup lifted, blessed, and offered for us---our hearts lifted, blessed, and offered to God--all this has profound significance for me...
...Reading Matthew in the mornings lately, I am awed by Jesus' schedule, humbled by his patience and compassion...
...gift scattered...
...I have long found a special grace in the orderly progression of the ritual that gathers us and feeds us and sends us out...
...Perhaps it is my own need to be fed by Jesus that so draws me to the Eucharist...
...I can see that the processes are similar: the wholeness of each God-given day reduced to a heap of broken moments...
...In fact, in some mysterious way, by some gracious miracle of God, the strength is in the breaking and the breaking up...
...I have heard sermons on that text since I was a child...
...He is forever trying to "get away to a quiet place" and is forever delayed and interrupted by the needs of other people, people he loves...
...With only five loaves and two fishes (less than even my much raided refrigerator would yield on short notice), Jesus feeds a multitude...
...I have begun to notice, in a rueful sort of way, how often Jesus in the Gospels seems as harried and distracted as a mother...
...Not a trick in my reperto~e, alas: in my experience, division only divides...
Vol. 118 • May 1991 • No. 9
