Lectio
“Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul.”
— Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath
Meditatio
There is more to life than what we can apprehend through our senses. There is more to life than material wealth, worldly wisdom, and our physical well-being. In fact, there is more to life than life itself, as we know it in time and space, for Jesus says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it (Matthew 16:25).” There is more to life, therefore, than the profit we can wring from the material plane — from the earth, from our bodies, and from the bodies of others — and Sabbath is an invitation to participate, with the More who is Godself, in exactly this more which we cannot touch, taste, see, hear, or smell, but which is somehow mysteriously present in and beyond our ability to sense it.
It says in Deuteronomy, and Jesus reiterates in Matthew’s Gospel, that “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4),” which is to say that the Substance that sustains our souls is of greater value and benefit to us than the substance that sustains our bodies. It is not that our bodies are invaluable or that they are unholy. As St. Paul says to the Corinthians, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). In Genesis, God Himself said that all of creation is good, especially His beloved children, made from dust into flesh, whom He blessed and called very good (Genesis 1:31).
But St. Paul also says that our bodies do not belong to us. They belong to something greater — they belong to God, who created them, who created us (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) — and that the proper use of our bodies is worship. The proper use of our bodies is to sacrifice them for and to God through prayer, service, and Sabbath rest for His sake, that, in doing so, we share in His glory and the fulfillment of His promise to sustain us through His Word, which, like the manna given to the Israelites, is not something with which we are acquainted or can acquire through our own means, but only through His grace and His mercy.
In the physicality of our bodies and the world within which we reside, we wrestle, day by day, with the world; we struggle to make our way through this veil of tears and toil. But in Sabbath, the Lord invites us to submit to Him, to submit to something greater, and to give our whole selves over to the sustenance He provides for the Greater within us — to the eternality within us. In our pursuit of worldly sustenance, no matter how much we acquire, store up, or consume, we are left feeling hungrier, emptier, craving more, and longing for more. In Sabbath, we allow God to provide the very more for which we long — the more He has always provided, but we were not humble enough to receive — and, in Sabbath, we find that true sustenance comes not from the seed that produces bread, but from the seed of eternity that produces life within us. We find that sustenance comes from every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Oratio
All That Is You
Bread of Life
sustain me
as I wait
there is nothing here
that satisfies
my hunger
for You
except for You
but You give me You
piecemeal
crumbs of manna
scraps of presence
along the road
glimpses of Your face
flickers of Your light
hints and happenings
drawing me ever nearer
to You
yet in my hunger
my very starvation for You
You give me all
that is You
as all that is me
and I am finally
satisfied
for a moment
Contemplatio
What satisfied you for a moment was not a fragment of God but God Himself, met in the only measure your hunger could hold. Let this settle in silence. Offer Him your consent, and nothing more, and let Him take you from there.
Related Scripture
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
— John 6:35
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Not His Gifts But Himself: The Cloud of Unknowing on Naked Love, which considers the same refusal to mistake God’s gifts for God Himself — met there in naked being, and here in crumbs of manna along the road.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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