Exodus 25:8 Leviticus 24:5-9 John 14:6-13
One thing I vaguely remember from my college-level Catechism class was that something called the “showbread” was a precursor to the Eucharist. What is showbread you ask?
According to Leviticus:
“You shall take bran flour and bake it into twelve cakes,using two tenths of an ephah of flour for each cake. These you shall place in two piles, six in each pile, on the pure gold table before the Lord. With each pile put some pure frankincense, which shall serve as an oblation to the Lord, a token of the bread offering. Regularly on each sabbath day the bread shall be set out before the Lord on behalf of the Israelites by an everlasting covenant. It shall belong to Aaron and his sons, who must eat it in a sacred place, since it is most sacred, his as a perpetual due from the oblations to the Lord.”
Hmm...A bread placed on the altar, the use of incense, set out before the Lord on the Sabbath day, belongs to the priest, and must be eaten in a sacred place? Sounds like a lot like the Eucharist to me! But the showbread wasn’t just there as a sacred bread. Whenever it wasn’t the Sabbath, the showbread was placed in the Ark of the Covenant, the presence of God on Earth. Another name for the showbread was “the bread of the presence.” I don’t know about you, but that sounds like Adoration!
Christ was always there even before he arrived into the world in the little town of Bethlehem. Jesus said to his disciples: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves.” Jesus and His father are one, which meant that whenever anyone in the Old Testament looked at the Ark of the Covenant, they were in the presence of the Holy Trinity.
Paragraph 1380 of the Catechism says: “It is highly fitting that Christ should have wanted to remain present to his Church in this unique way. Since Christ was about to take his departure from his own in his visible form, he wanted to give us his sacramental presence; since he was about to offer himself on the cross to save us, he wanted us to have the memorial of the love with which he loved us “to the end,” even to the giving of his life. In his Eucharistic presence he remains mysteriously in our midst as the one who loved us and gave himself up for us and he remains under signs that express and communicate this love: (669, 478, 2715)
The Church and the world have a great need for Eucharistic worship. Jesus awaits us in this sacrament of love. Let us not refuse the time to go to meet him in adoration, in contemplation full of faith, and open to making amends for the serious offenses and crimes of the world. Let our adoration never cease.”
Hope this makes up for the fact that I only got a B in your Catechism class, Sister Madeline Grace!
I hope that when you spend time in front of the Blessed Sacrament, you will go there knowing that you are not only in the presence of God the Son, but God the Father and God the Holy Spirit as well. God bless, sisters in Christ!
