Why Jesus chose Bread and Wine?
Why Jesus chose Bread and Wine? Jesus gave us the Eucharist as a gift at the Last Supper. He used Bread and Wine:
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.
Matthew 26:26-28
These have a connection to the Jewish Passover celebration but had even more profound symbolism.
May 2, 2017
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:
“This [Jesus] did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Paschal banquet ‘in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us‘”.
The question is, why did God choose bread and wine when there are many other things he could have gone with, maybe even some meat? I have heard someone wonder if you will give someone your “flesh and blood,” shouldn’t you provide then something that comes closer to those?
That might sound like it makes sense, but the reality is, God does what he will. We can understand some of his actions from his words, others we will wait to know when we meet him. But here’s the first reason we can point to right now for why he chose bread and wine: They are part of his Old Testament revelations.
The Catechism says:
In the Old Covenant, bread and wine were offered in sacrifice among the first fruits of the earth as a sign of grateful acknowledgment to the Creator. But they also received a new significance in the context of the Exodus: the unleavened bread that Israel eats every year at Passover commemorates the haste of the departure that liberated them from Egypt; the remembrance of the manna in the desert will always recall to Israel that it lives by the bread of the Word of God; their daily bread is the fruit of the promised land, the pledge of God’s faithfulness to his promises.
The “cup of blessing” at the end of the Jewish Passover meal adds to the festive joy of wine an eschatological dimension: the messianic expectation of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, he gave a new and definitive meaning to the blessing of the bread and the cup.
