“We need to be proactive in guaranteeing bread and butter issues for humanity” – The Archbishop

Homily by Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna

St John’s Co-Cathedral, Valletta

18th June 2017

We, men and women of this world, are very often very concerned with bread and butter issues. The Lord himself told us to pray: “give us today our daily bread”. When he was confronted with a huge crowd of people who were very, very humgry, he multiplied the bread that was offered to him and told his disciples: “you feed the crowd”(Mk 6, 37).

Today’s solemnity would also remind us that we need to be proactive in guaranteeing bread and butter issues for humanity and in society especially thinking of the poor who should never go hungry.

But the Lord goes beyond that, he says: “not by bread alone do you live, but from every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord” (Mt 4, 4).The same quote from Deuteronomy he uses in his polemic with Satan at the beginning of his ministry.

And so he teaches us with the gift of the Eucharist, with the bread and wine transubstantiated into his body and blood that we need to live beyond bread and butter issues, that we are called to a higher perspective and a more beautiful destiny and that is eternal life. And the Eucharist becomes the bread of life, that life-giving bread that make life worth living in this world and opens up our hearts and our minds to the true and extraordinary perspective of eternal life.

     Archbishop of Malta