Why Jesus chose Bread and Wine?

Why Jesus chose Bread and Wine? Jesus gave us the Eucharist as a gift at the Last Supper. He used Bread and Wine:

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.

Matthew 26:26-28

These have a connection to the Jewish Passover celebration but had even more profound symbolism.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains: 

“This [Jesus] did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Paschal banquet ‘in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us‘”.

CCC 1323

The question is, why did God choose bread and wine when there are many other things he could have gone with, maybe even some meat? I have heard someone wonder if you will give someone your “flesh and blood,” shouldn’t you provide then something that comes closer to those?

That might sound like it makes sense, but the reality is, God does what he will. We can understand some of his actions from his words, others we will wait to know when we meet him. But here’s the first reason we can point to right now for why he chose bread and wine:. They are part of his Old Testament revelations. 

The Catechism says:

In the Old Covenant, bread and wine were offered in sacrifice among the first fruits of the earth as a sign of grateful acknowledgment to the Creator. But they also received a new significance in the context of the Exodus: the unleavened bread that Israel eats every year at Passover commemorates the haste of the departure that liberated them from Egypt; the remembrance of the manna in the desert will always recall to Israel that it lives by the bread of the Word of God; their daily bread is the fruit of the promised land, the pledge of God’s faithfulness to his promises.

The “cup of blessing” at the end of the Jewish Passover meal adds to the festive joy of wine an eschatological dimension: the messianic expectation of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, he gave a new and definitive meaning to the blessing of the bread and the cup.

CCC 1334

Symbols

All of the Old Testament revelations point to the New, so most times to understand the New, we refer to the Old. God knew he would be using bread and wine, so he began to prepare us in the people of Israel thousands of years before. So many of their experiences prefigured the Eucharist.

Another reason we can profer is: He likely chose bread and wine because of its symbolism in how they are made. As St Augustine noted in his sermon about the symbolism of making bread:

In this loaf of bread, you are given clearly to understand how much you should love unity. I mean, was that loaf made from one grain? Weren’t there many grains of wheat? But before they came into the loaf, they were all separate; they were joined together by means of water after a certain amount of pounding and crushing. Unless wheat is ground, after all, and moistened with water, it can’t possibly get into this shape which is called bread. In the same way, you too were being ground and pounded, as it were, by the humiliation of fasting and the sacrament of exorcism.

Then came baptism, and you were, in a manner of speaking, moistened with water in order to be shaped into bread. But it’s not yet bread without fire to bake it. So what does fire represent? That’s the chrism, the anointing. Oil, the fire-feeder, you see, is the sacrament of the Holy Spirit … You see, he breathes into us the charity which should set us on fire for God. And have us think lightly of the world, and burn up our straw, and purge and refine our hearts like gold. So the Holy Spirit comes, fire after water, and you are baked into the bread, which is the body of Christ. And that’s how unity is signified.

This calls to mind the words of St Paul in his letter to the Corinthians: the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf” (1 Corinthians 10:17).

Another thing to remember is, bread is a staple food virtually in every culture in the world. Jesus loved simple symbols everyone could understand, something universal.

For the wine symbolism, St Augustine gives something similar again:

But just as one loaf is made from single grains collected together and somehow mixed in with each other into the dough. so in the same way, the body of Christ is made one by the harmony of charity. And what grains are for the body of Christ, grapes are for his blood; because wine too comes out from the press, and what was separated one by one in many grapes flows together into a unity and becomes wine. Thus both in the bread and in the cup, there is the mystery, the sacrament, of unity. 

Sermon 229A

Why Jesus chose Bread and Wine?

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