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| Temple priests replacing the showbread each week, Henry Bill (1871). |
In the Jewish Temple, in front of the Holy of Holies,
there stood a gold-gilded table upon which unleavened bread was placed. The
bread was called lechem hapanim – ‘bread of the presence’ or ‘bread of
the face,’ often translated in English as ‘showbread’.
“Showbread” does not reflect the Hebrew well but
it does capture the fact that the bread was ‘on display’—visible at least to
the Levitical priests who had access to the interior of the Temple, and shown to the people three times a year. In Exodus the
Lord commands that the bread should be set “on the table before me always”
(25:30). In Leviticus we read that a total of twelve loaves were stacked on the
table, six in each stack. Every Sabbath the bread was to be eaten by the
priests “in a holy place” and then replaced with twelve fresh loaves (Lev
24:5-9).
Three times a year, when the people of Israel made the
pilgrimage to the Temple—on Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot—the
priests would present the table and the showbread exclaiming: “Look at how
beloved you are by God!”[1]
The Medieval Jewish commentator Maimonides was perplexed
by the lechem hapanim. He confessed that he could not find in the
Rabbinical Tradition any explanations for the commandment.[2]
For a Catholic however, the meaning is clear: we have
here in the Old Testament a foreshadowing of the sacrament of the Eucharist—
the New Covenant’s Lechem Hapanim, the true, real and ultimate ‘Bread of
the Presence’. The Eucharist is nothing less than the fulfillment of this
ancient temple ritual. On this feast of Corpus Christi it will be worth exploring
how the Eucharist is its fulfillment.
How the “Showbread’s” Made
The Talmud states that the ‘bread of the presence’ was
made by the Garmus family, who kept the recipe a secret. One time they were
asked to share the secret by the Sages but they refused. Dismissed from their
duty, others attempted to make it, but without the recipe the bread would go
mouldy and stale before the week’s end. The Garmus family were reappointed but
the Sages wanted to know why they kept the recipe a secret. The family explained:
“We know that the Temple will be destroyed, and we are concerned that an
unworthy man will learn how to bake the showbread and use it to serve an idol.”[3]
The Garmus family were thus seemingly appointed by God to
make the showbread, and without them, the bread was unable to be made. We see a
parallel in the ministerial priesthood of the Catholic Church: the spiritual
Garmus family as it were, entrusted with being the instruments through whom
Christ makes the Showbread of the New Covenant—and without this precious gift
of the ordained priesthood, there would be no transubstantiation: (trans – across; ‘moving across
substance’) from simple bread to bread that veils the Divine Presence.
What is called “the secret” (secreta) in the
Tridentine Mass, and contained in the
prayer over the offerings in the Ordinary Form, which the priest recites
during the Eucharistic Liturgy, is in a way symbolic of ‘the Eucharistic
secret’ they have received at ordination. A secret first whispered into the
ears of the Apostles and passed on from Bishops to priests since—conferring the
unique ability to reside over the consecration of the bread and wine.
In the Old Law only “Aaron and his sons,” the Levitical
priests, were allowed to eat the showbread (Lev 24:9), but in the New Law all
the faithful are summoned to feast on the Lechem Hapanim, the Bread of
God’s Real Presence and the Bread of God’s Face. Since although the ministerial
priesthood alone can consecrate the Bread, all the baptised share in the
general priesthood of Christ (CCC 1268). So that while ‘the Eucharistic secret’ is
entrusted to the Bishops, and in turn to the priests, it is received by and
belongs in turn to all the faithful. In the words of Pope St. John Paul II: “With
the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the ‘secret’ of the resurrection.”[4]
Twelve Baskets
There were twelve loaves of showbread in the Temple serving
as a memorial of what God had done in the wilderness for the whole nation of Israel
with all its twelve tribes. In the Gospels we notice also that after the
feeding of the five-thousand there were twelve baskets of bread and fish
leftover—corresponding in turn to the twelve tribes of Israel founded upon the
twelve sons of Jacob, foreshadowing the twelve Apostles, the spiritual sons of
the New Jacob (Christ), upon whom the spiritual Israel of the Church was to be
founded (Lk 9). The meaning runs deeper than a mere parallel when we consider
other Scriptural accounts.
In Matthew we read that one Sabbath Jesus is strolling
with His disciples as they pick grain along the way to eat. The Pharisees
become upset at this, forbidden as it was according to their extra-stringent
reading of the law. Jesus responds, referring to an account recorded in 1
Samuel (21:1-9):
"Have you not read what David did, when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?" (Mt 12:3-4)
On a different note, we read elsewhere in the Gospels the
command of Christ at the Last Supper when He commissioned the Apostles “To do this,”
to consecrate bread and wine, to celebrate the Eucharist, “in memory of me”. On
another seemingly unrelated note recall the words of John who tells us that
Jesus understood His Body to be the fulfillment of the Temple (Jn 2:21). As the
Jews would gather to worship at the Temple, it was now in Him that worshippers,
Jew and Gentile alike, were to gather as ‘one Body’ in the Spirit for the glory
of the Father (Jn 4:23).
Let’s tie these scriptures together. In the Eucharist we
have Jesus, the Son of David, reaching into the Temple of His Person to give
His whole Self—the Bread of His Presence.
In the Eucharist we have the single Passion of Jesus made
manifest. At the consecration, when the priest breaks the Bread, we have Jesus
breaking open the Temple of His Body before us and opening the way for we who
believe in Him to “take and eat” from the wooden table of the Cross, gilded
with blood not gold, the Bread of His Heart, the Bread of His Love. If we
strain our eyes in faith we will see Love in a tiny host on the table of the
Eucharistic altar; and if we strain our ears in faith we will hear the angels
and saints exclaiming like the Levetical priests of old: “Look at how beloved you are by God!”
In the Eucharist Christ’s resurrection is not a past
phenomenon but a present reality unfolding before us. As the priest comes forth
from the altar with Communion, here we have our Lord rising from the dead, coming
forth through eternity aflame with love as piping hot bread. He comes as One
Bread but broken into a myriad pieces to satisfy the hunger of those who seek
His Face. From the Holy of Holies of heaven He strolls through the generations
picking the ordinary wheat the Church has to offer, and giving it out instead,
transformed as the Bread of His Presence.
There used to be twelve loaves in the Temple; and when
Christ fed the multitude, twelve baskets of bread remained. In one way the
twelve loaves in the old Temple can be taken to symbolise the foreknowledge and
desire God had to give Himself in the Person of the Word in the Holy Eucharist.
A foreknowledge possessed from eternity, and a harboured desire that had to
wait to be realised in time, so that its realisation and mystery was ‘locked
up,’ as it were, for millennia.
At the Last Supper this desire was finally realised: the
Showbread of heaven was brought out from the sanctuary of Christ’s Person and
in commissioning the twelve Apostles “To do this,” to consecrate and distribute
the Holy Bread, it was as though each Apostle received a basket from Christ
containing the total sum of every Eucharistic host ever consecrated—from the
first to the last. Since in these twelve Apostles, Mathias taking over Judas’
place, every priest, and therefore, every celebration of the Eucharist can
trace its origin. The Apostles went forth throughout the world, the basket of
the Eucharistic mystery in-hand, and in a way, every Eucharist has
come from these twelve baskets, which in turn have come from the Table of the Last Supper
on earth, and from the Altar of the Father in heaven. We don't all have the ministry of distributing the Eucharist as ordained priests, but we can all do so spiritually by Eucharistic-living: by breaking ourselves up in love and allowing Christ to distribute Himself through us to the world.
A Perpetual Decree
All that is complete and fulfilled in Christ’s own Body—life,
death and resurrection—simply remains to be actualised in most of Christ’s
Mystic Body the Church (Heb 10). Apart from Our Lady, even St. Joseph (i.e. see Frances de Sales), and
perhaps a few others whom tradition hints at—even the glorified souls in heaven
await the literal completion of the Paschal Mystery in themselves, by waiting
for their resurrected bodies. The suffering souls in purgatory await the
completion of the death of Christ in themselves through their purgation, so
that they might arrive at the spiritual realisation of the resurrection in
beatitude. Those who have died do not receive the sacrament of the
Eucharist. True, they do ‘receive Communion’ mediated through Christ’s Humanity,
but in a different mode—they are either ‘in the que to Eternal Communion’ (purgatory)
or ‘in Holy Communion’ (heaven). Thus what is already fulfilled in Christ’s
Body is realised in the souls in purgatory and heaven, His suffering and
triumphant members, outside the ordinary sacramental means which is established
for pilgrim souls.
For the pilgrim Church—the Church on earth—the Eucharist
is the established sacramental means of realising in Her members what is
already fulfilled in Christ. Hence all that is complete and fulfilled in
Christ’s own Body, necessarily contained in His Sacramental and Eucharistic Body,
simply remains to be, in a manner of speaking, transubstantiated into
Christ’s Mystic Body the Church on earth. What is complete in Christ our Head is
in need of moving across (trans) into us His members.
“Verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away, not
one jot, not one tittle shall pass away from the law until it is fulfilled” (Mt
5:18). The entire law is already fulfilled in Christ, and because Christ is entirely
present in the Eucharist, the Eucharist is the fulfillment of the law. In the
words of Lumen Gentium: “The Eucharist is the source and summit of the
Christian life.”
In Leviticus, where we find the instructions concerning
the Bread of the Presence, we find two important Hebrew words stating its
importance: chaq olam, translating to “an everlasting ordinance” or “perpetual
decree” (24:9). Thus the Bread of the Presence and the law surrounding it is
stated by God to be “everlasting” and perpetual”. The Jewish Temple is long
gone, and the showbread hasn’t been made for two-thousand years. Yet Christ the
Living Temple stands in full splendour, Its embodiment in the Church will
endure, and the Showbread of the Eucharist has been around for two-thousand
years. The “perpetual decree” of the showbread has not “passed away” but it has
been fulfilled in the Eucharist which will endure as “an everlasting ordinance”
until the end of the world when it too will be fulfilled with the consummation
of the Church and the entire universe in Christ (Col 1).
It is amazing to think that since the time of the Apostles
the Table of the Church has never lacked the Showbread of the Eucharist. As the
Garmus family kept the old showbread supplied each Sabbath, so too, the Church
through Her ministers has kept the supply of the New Showbread renewed. A
supply which in a spiritual sense is a multiplication of the first loaf broken
by Christ in the cenacle.
With perpetual reverence Aaron and the Levitical priests
treated the old showbread. How much more must we the pilgrim Church, perhaps
not all belonging to the ministerial priesthood, but certainly to the “royal priesthood,”
(1 Pet 2:9) treat the New Showbread who is Jesus Himself, God and Man disguised
and present in our midst? What a wonderful thing to “show” our Eucharistic Lord
on the altars of our churches, elevated and on display in a monstrance for the
People of God to see. How excellent it would be to try our best to “show” this
Holy Bread perpetually, to work together to adore Him perpetually ‘on earth as
He is in heaven’.
[1]
Menachot 29a, see Chabad, accessed 23 July, 2019, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2974301/jewish/The-Showbread-The-How-and-Why-of-the-Temple-Bread-Offering.htm
[2] Maimonides,
Guide for the Perplexed, part 3, chp., 45.
[3]
See Talmud Yoma 38a, Chabad, accessed 23 July, 2019, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2974301/jewish/The-Showbread-The-How-and-Why-of-the-Temple-Bread-Offering.htm
[4]
Ecclesiae de Eucharistia, 18.
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