The Eucharist: the New Manna from Heaven

This Sunday, we will be celebrating the beautiful Eucharistic feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi). On this day, the Church gives thanks to God for its greatest treasure: the amazing gift He gave us on the night before He died, the gift of His Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist.

In the first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy this Sunday, we hear about the hungry people in the desert during the Exodus being fed by God with manna. In the Gospel from Saint John, we hear part of the great discourse of Jesus on the Bread of Life in which He refers to the gift of manna and reveals that the bread He will give, also bread from heaven, is even greater since it is His “flesh for the life of the world.” Jesus says: “Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

The great Bishop and Doctor of the Church, Saint Ambrose, wrote the following: “What is greater, manna from heaven or the body of Christ? The body of Christ, of course, for He is the Creator of heaven. In addition, he who ate the manna died but he who has eaten this body, it will become for him the forgiveness of sins and he ‘shall not die forever’.”

The manna from heaven given by God to His people in the desert during the Exodus is clearly an anticipation or foreshadowing of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is “the new manna.” In fact, the Jewish people expected that there would be a new miracle of manna when the Messiah came. As God fed the people with bread from heaven on their journey in the desert to the promised land, so God feeds us with bread from heaven on our journey through the desert of this life to the promised land of heaven. The bread is different, however, since the bread of the Eucharist is the Bread of Life; it is Jesus, His flesh that gives life through the Holy Spirit.

The “new manna” of the Eucharist is the food for our journey to heaven. That is why the Eucharist is called “Viaticum,” a Latin word that means “with you on the way.” The Eucharist is spiritual food. As the manna provided bodily nourishment for the Israelites in the desert, the “new manna” provides spiritual nourishment for us, satisfying our hungry hearts. As we sing so often in a popular hymn: “You satisfy the hungry heart with gift of finest wheat, come give to us, O saving Lord, the bread of life to eat.”

We are reminded of the gift of manna in the Second Eucharistic Prayer, especially with the more accurate English translation which now reads: “Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall, so that they may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” During the Exodus, dew fell upon the camp of the chosen people in the desert and, when it evaporated, the heavenly manna was there on the ground. The dewfall yielded food from heaven for the Israelites on their pilgrimage. For us, in the Eucharist, the dewfall of the Holy Spirit yields the Body and Blood of Christ for our pilgrimage to heaven.

Another parallel between the manna and the Eucharist is that the Israelites conserved the manna in the Ark of the Covenant, which was kept in the Holy of Holies where God’s presence was adored. Though the manna was not God, it came from God. This foreshadows the tabernacle in our churches where Christ is adored in the Eucharist, His Real Presence. The hosts are kept in a golden ciborium, reminiscent of the gold jar in which the manna was kept in the Ark of the Covenant.

In Psalm 78:25, the manna is described as the “bread of angels.” It was not eaten by angels, but it was angelic in its supernatural origin. The Eucharist is truly the “bread of angels” because of its effect in our souls. As the angels have a participation in the divine life through grace and glory and thus can be said to partake of this bread, so