Fr Matthew Reese

He rained down manna upon them to eat *
and gave them grain from heaven.

So mortals ate the bread of angels; *
he provided for them food enough.

—Psalm 78, vv. 24-25

Dear Friends,

This morning’s psalm is full of warnings and admonitions to the people of Israel, and the Psalmist characterizes the duties (and failures) of this people in generational terms. We read a little earlier in the psalm,

5 He gave his decrees to Jacob
and established a law for Israel, *
which he commanded them to teach their children;

6 That the generations to come might know,
and the children yet unborn; *
that they in their turn might tell it to their children;

In reading this passage, and many others like it in the Hebrew Bible, we can feel the enormous weight of progeny—the weight of handing down the statutes, handing down the faith, handing down all the material of religion that we love and hold dear.

Writing from the annual priests’ retreat at Chapel Rock, I know that these are very live questions.

Is the Church handing down those Gospel truths so “that the generations to come might know” the Lord? Are we answering the moment? Are speaking the language of our day? Are we really responding to the needs of the present time?

We can get so wrapped up in these forward-looking questions, though, that we only experience God as being just over the horizon. A God whom we are pursuing—a vision of the Church-to-come, a Church “yet unborn.”

But God is with us, now.

He is with us in our prayer, in our yearning, in our searching, in our struggling.

And God is with us every time we come to the altar to be fed.

As Christians we are always living with an eye to that ultimate reality of the Kingdom of Heaven. But in the meanwhile, let us remember the words of the Psalmist: “So mortals ate the bread of angels; * he provided for them food enough.”

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew