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Bread Come Down from Heaven

  • BLESSED JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN

About these words I observe, first, that they evidently declare on the face of them some very great mystery.  


EucharistHow can they be otherwise taken?  If they do not, they must be a figurative way of declaring something which is not mysterious, but plain and intelligible.  But is it conceivable that he who is the truth and love itself, should have used difficult words when plain words would do?

Why should he have used words, the sole effect of which, in that case, would be to perplex, to startle us needlessly?  Does his mercy delight in creating difficulties?  Does he put stumbling blocks in our way without cause?  Does he excite hopes, and then disappoint them?  It is possible; he may have some deep purpose in so doing: but which is more likely, that his meaning is beyond us, or his words beyond his meaning?

All who read such awful words as those in question will be led by the first impression of them, either with the disciples to go back, as at a hard saying, or with Saint Peter to welcome what is promised:  they will be excited in one way or the other, with incredulous surprise or with believing hope.

And are the feelings of these opposite witnesses, discordant indeed, yet all of them deep, after all unfounded?  Are they to go for nothing?  Are they no token of our Savior's real meaning?  This desire, and again this aversion, so naturally raised, are they without a real object, and the mere consequence of a general mistake on all hands, of what Christ meant as imagery, for literal truth?  Surely this is very improbable.  

This is Meaghen Gonzalez, Editor of CERC. I hope you appreciated this piece. We curate these articles especially for believers like you.

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Acknowledgement

newmanJohn Henry Cardinal Newman. "Bread Come Down from Heaven." excerpt from Parochial and Plain Sermons (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997).

This excerpt appeared in Magnificat in May 2014.

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Copyright © 1997 Ignatius Press