Give us this day our daily bread.
The Lord taught us to pray with these humble words.
We do not ask for more than necessary.
This day is enough.
Tomorrow is in the hands of our Father. Tomorrow will care for itself. Our Father will be our Father tomorrow as He was yesterday and as He is today.
This day is enough for I do not know whether I shall be around tomorrow. My Father knows, and I trust Him to give each of us today what we need.
To be precise, what we need is more than bread.
Bread and water and light and reasonably good weather: these are some of our elementary needs, and we cannot forget that too many of our brothers and sisters in the world are deprived of them.
We value the bread of each day, and we consume it with gratitude.
We give thanks for it to the Lord who cares for us.
We bless Him before and after each meal because, ultimately, He is the one who gives us the bread on which we live.
Give us this day our daily bread.
God knows our needs and He knows that we do not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord (Dt 8:3).
Our body needs bread; our soul needs someone speaking with us, addressing our longing for knowledge and love, recognition and affection, light and hope.
We need more than mere words, though. We thirst for a word of life. We long for the word which comes from God. In Jesus, we are given the very Word of the Father.
The Word of the Father makes Himself our word of life, the bread of our souls, our Bread of Life. We pray, Give us this day our daily bread, and we receive the Bread from heaven who gives life to the world (cf. Jn 6:32-33). We ask for it daily and we receive it daily with thanksgiving.
The bread given by God is our Eucharist, our thanksgiving.
It fills us to the point that it overflows in us into thanksgiving to our Father.
This is the bread of the children who know their Father, who share in the life of their Father, who are sustained in their lives as children of the Father by the Bread of the Father who is the Word of God and the Son of God.
Behold the bread of life who is the Son of God giving Himself to us so that our life becomes one with His, so that we become one heart and one soul, one Body in Him.
Behold the daily bread of the children of the Father.
Behold the bread which is more than bread and gives a life that is more than human.
Behold the bread who makes us sharers in God’s life, in God’s being and nature.
Behold the bread that makes us one with God and with each other.
Behold the bread of life who is the Eucharistic Body of Christ building us up as the Ecclesial Body of Christ.
Give us this day our daily bread that makes us the Church of Christ.
It is the bread of love which no one eats on his own. It is put on the family table which is also the altar of the Lord.
This bread makes us brothers and sisters.
This bread is the bond of married couples and the weaving together of our families and communities.
We all live from the one life of Christ, whose flesh we eat and whose blood we drink for through them we have eternal and divine life (Jn 6:53-54).
To the Father who gives us daily the Bread we need,
to the Son who out of love for us makes Himself the daily bread of His Church,
to the Holy Spirit of love who binds in unity all whom He gathers in the house of the Bread, the holy church of God,
to the Blessed Trinity be our thanksgiving, our love and our praise, now and for ever. Amen