Tina requested this song by Rory Cooney. The net is full of hate for this song as heretical. If real presence means anything though, an aspect of it is captured poetically in this song and people should lighten up. I’ve never sung it and had to get chords by playing a snippet from the net through BIAB. You can hear a snippet and purchase it from OCP here.
Refrain
I myself am the bread of life.
You and I are the bread of life.
Taken and blessed, broken and shared by Christ
That the world might live.
Verse 1
This bread is spirit, gift of the Maker’s love,
and we who share it know that we can be one:
a living sign of God in Christ.
Refrain
Verse 2
Here is God’s kingdom given to us as food.
This is our body, this is our blood:
a living sign of God in Christ.
Refrain
Verse 3
Lives broken open, stories shared aloud,
Become a banquet, a shelter for the world:
a living sign of God in Christ.
Refrain
Rory Cooney
© 1987, North American Liturgy Resources, Published by OCP Publications
The reason serious Catholics hate this song is that it’s a monstrous exercise in spiritual pride. You are NOT the Bread of Life, meet food for the salvation of the world, and we aren’t, either. The Bread of Life is Our Lord Jesus Christ. What you and I are is poor stumbling sinners, constantly in need of pardon and strengthening ourselves.
Elinor is right. Can’t you understand that singing in the place of Jesus (making us God) is blaphemous? Who does, “I myself am the bread of life,” refer to? In case there is any confusion about the author’s meaning (!), he adds “You and I are the bread of life” and “this is our body, this is our blood”. NO, WE ARE NOT THE EUCHARIST. Jesus said, “This is MY Body.” Is there any confusion there?? Putting the “bread of life” lower case flippantly drives the point home: there is nothing holy or spiritual about the Eucharist; it’s just us! Yet, if you receive the Body unworthily, St. Paul says “you drink judgement upon yourself”; you go to Hell.
Those who don’t understand the Real Presence will not understand what Real Catholics are talking about. How do you “lighten up” about the centerpiece of Christianity when twisted like this? This song does nothing but scandalize.
Thanks for your comment John and your sincere desire to educate me.
I’m sure I will never understand the full extent of the real presence but the Church teaches that Christ is present in the ministry of the word, the liturgical assembly, the souls of the just, the presider in liturgical service, the sacraments, when the Church prays and sings and in the Eucharistic species. (Look at SC 7 – the analysis I nicked from my lecturer’s notes).
The key point is the multiple modes in which Christ’s presence occurs and one of them is that Christ is present in the people assembled at Mass. The real presence in the Eucharistic species cannot be separated from the whole liturgical mystery including the presence of Christ in the souls of the faithful. You could argue that Cooney is clumsily oversimplifying, or you could say he is highlighting one aspect of the real presence without denigrating other ways this occurs. I prefer to think he is saying as part of a worshipping assembly living the mystery of the liturgy we are Church, the Body of Christ.
I apologise if asking people to lighten up is not appropriate, perhaps I should just say that narrow definitions don’t cover the fullness of the concept. Of course we are poor stumbling sinners and despite our brokenness we are transformed as a worshipping community. I would have preferred Cooney to say WE are the bread of life, as a metaphor for the Body of Christ, rather than I am, of course, but he is trying to highlight a facet of the truth that he thought needed exposition in a song.
I’m sure you and Elinor are the Body of Christ in your worshipping assemblies and I wish you well.
cheers
Geoffrey
I appreciate Elinor and Rogers points. However, as a Poet, I understood what Cooney meant. He is simply saying that we are another Christ for the world when we live as God commanded us to live. When we bear insults, when we love instead of hating those who offended us no matter how much, when we turn the other chic when someone slaps us, when we become friends to the downtrodden, etc.
Christ expectations for us as Christian is not by any means easy or natural to us as human beings. It’s like being “broken” because it hurts not to act the way we would ordinarily love to act . But when we receive him in the Eucharist, it reminds us that Jesus Christ first did what he is asking us to do even at the cost of his life and that we too should live likewise as another Christ.