Bread Of Adversity And The Bread Of Life

Saturday of the First Week in Advent 2022

We are all in our days in a time of economic uncertainty and political division such as none of us has seen in our lifetimes. That distracts us from what is most important, our final end, the goal of our human life. That is, of course, divinization, being raised like Jesus to adopted divine status in union with the Trinity forever.

The prophet Isaiah told his people these somewhat equivocal words in a similar time of distress: “though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.” What are the “bread of adversity” and “the water of affliction,” anyway? We can find the answer to the first back in Torah, in the book of Deuteronomy. The connection is with the foundational feast of Judaism, of the Hebrew testament. The Jews, on their flight from Egyptian bondage, left in haste, so they could get away before the Pharaoh might change his mind about letting them go. There was no time to let the bread rise overnight, so they just threw some flour and water together and baked it fast. It was flat and probably tasted at least bland. So every year they commemorated this crisis time by eating unleavened bread, and it was called the “bread of affliction.” So Isaiah is telling his listeners that they would undergo a troubled time and the food available would remind them of Passover. (This is confirmed in First Kings when the nasty king of Israel, offended by the prophet Micaiah ben Imla, throws him in prison and orders him fed with the “bread of affliction.” That’s another way to say the same thing.)

What was the “water of affliction”? Hebrew culture was ambivalent about water. On the one hand, it was their primary beverage and enabled most of what they did economically to go on. On the other, however, those who plied the seas and rivers or lived near the flooding Jordan river were well acquainted with the terrible things that floods and storms could do to their lives and property. Thus, “water” and “affliction” had a real connection. And if you were caught in the many sieges the kingdoms of Israel and Judah underwent over a few centuries, you also knew how the lack of water could cause one to try to drink the undrinkable just to stay alive.

But note here that there is a connection with the appearance of the Teacher at these difficult times, amid the meals with unleavened bread and unpalatable drink. The festival in question is Passover, isn’t it? The words are reminiscent of the last Passover of Christ, when He celebrated the liberation from Egypt and the current liberation from sin He is about to undergo, with unleavened bread which He identified with His Body. And the next day, at the culmination of that last Passover, just after Jesus declares “it is finished,” the soldier opens up His heart and Blood and Water gush out. On that hill, as Isaiah prophesied, Christ became a brook running with water, even as He was unjustly slaughtered for the forgiveness of our sins.

This is the message Christ tells us in the Gospel to spread throughout the world, as His apostles did first to the Jews, and then to the rest of us. Bless His Name forever.