"He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread." Luke 24:35

A little girl of fourteen was released from Auschwitz on the day of its liberation. She did not know where to go. The Nazišs had killed and separated her family in the dreaded concentration camp. So she walked and stumbled into the next Polish city. Too weak to walk, famished and physically broken from starvation and lack of nourishment, she fell to the ground. A young Catholic seminarian happened to see her lying in the street, came up to her and gave her a glass of hot tea. Later she spoke of how she had not drunk tea or anything else, for that matter, in years and lifted the glass to her lips as though it were a gift from heaven. The young man returned a few seconds later with bread. This too she devoured. Then, the young man asked her where she was going. She answered Cracow, but she was too feeble to walk two miles to the train station. Much to her surprise, he lifted her up and put her emaciated body over his back and carried her there. She asked his name, and he told her. She never heard the name again, until 1978 when it was announced on a balcony in St. Peter's Square. The young man was none other than Karol Wojtyla, who would be Pope John Paul II.

When Karol Wojtyla gave the starving Jewish girl a piece of bread, his gesture was more than just a good deed. For the Catholic, bread means more than just earthly nourishment. "Man does not live by bread alone." It is a symbol and sign of a greater reality that it communicates in God's love for us in the Eucharist.

The Gospel of today from St. Luke describes the encounter of two disciples with Jesus on the road to Emmaus. The Resurrection has just happened, and the disciples do not recognize Jesus. He is frankly the last person they expect to see. Jesus pretends ignorance. What's new, he asks. The disciples speak of Jesus Himself. When they have finished, Jesus then explains why He Himself had to die and rise so that he could "enter into his glory." Yet, the disciples still do not recognize him. When they reach the town, they sit with him, and St. Luke says, "He took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them" (Luke 24:30). Only in two other places does St. Luke use almost this exact wording in reference to what Jesus does. The first is at the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. "Then, taking the five loaves and the two fish, Jesus raised his eyes to heaven, pronounced a blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to his disciples for distribution to the crowd" (Luke 9:16). The second time was when this sign was fulfilled in the Eucharist. While Jesus was seated at the Last Supper, St. Luke reads, Jesus "then, taking bread and giving thanks, he broke it and gave it to them" (Luke 22:19). Here, in the midst of language that invokes the Eucharistic reality, the disciples recognize Jesus, and St. Luke says Jesus disappeared. Jesus disappeared because He was present to them in "the breaking of the bread", which for the early Christians meant only one thing, the Eucharist.

When Karol Wojtyla gave the starving Jewish girl bread to eat, he was laying the foundation for what he would do for the rest of his life as a Catholic priest. As a Catholic pope, he would see the opportunity to teach about what he called "Eucharistic amazement." He felt Catholics needed to reignite their Eucharistic amazement at what Jesus gave us. Only when a Catholic understands more fully the reality of what he or she celebrates and believes, can the Catholic be fully that "acting person", about which the pope so often spoke. To be a Catholic fully alive is to be aware of the signs of the times, and one of the principle signs of the times is the Eucharist. It expresses the death and rising of the Lord. As St. Paul writes, "Every time, then, you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes" (I Corinthians 11:26). In the Eucharist we are plunged, immersed into the life giving passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Bread for the Catholic is never just bread. Bread for the Catholic is a sign of what Jesus did, and in the Eucharistic bread is the reality of what He is. What is said in the Old Testament is fulfilled. Exodus quotes God saying, "I will now rain down bread from heaven for you" (Exodus 16:4). Jesus fulfills this passage and says, "This is the bread that comes down from heaven for a man to eat and never die. I myself am the living bread come down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he shall live forever; the bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world" (John 6:50-51).

The fourteen-year-old girl would later say that John Paul had saved her life. That in and of itself was notable. As the Vicar of Christ, John Paul would remind us of what Jesus did with that bread the night before He died and what He does with that bread at our Eucharistic celebrations. That too is notable. For him the amazement never ended, and for us the amazement should continue.