At Our Lady of Lourdes, we continue our Lenten Parish Retreat. This fourth week of Lent our theme is “The Bread of the Face of God,” a theme from the Book of Exodus.       After the Exodus, when the children of Israel were in the wilderness of Sinai, God instructed Moses to set up a sanctuary (the Tabernacle) that He might dwell in the midst of the people ( Ex. 25:8 ), according to a vision Moses was given of the heavenly sanctuary ( Ex. 25,9, 40 ; Heb. 8:4 ). One of the three sacred objects to be placed in the inner Holy Place was a golden table of bread ( Ex.25:23-30 ), patterned after the heavenly reality Moses was given to see. The description is sometimes translated “showbread” or “Bread of the Presence.” However, Hebrew word panim literally means “face,” or, “Bread of the Face [of God].”       The table would not only hold the bread, but also hold bowls for the pouring of libations of wine, as well as plates of incense as the bread and ...

We continue our Lenten Parish Retreat, and this third week of Lent our theme is “Raining Down Bread from Heaven.” It comes from Exodus 16:4 where the Lord says to Moses, “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you.” The “manna” given in the wilderness is the precursor, the type, of the Bread of Life that Christ gives us, the Eucharist.       The setting in Exodus is that the 12 tribes of Jacob/Israel had now come forth from Egypt. The Passover deliverance had spared their first-born sons from death when the destroying angel “passed over” their homes upon seeing the blood of the slain lamb on the wood of their doorposts. ( Exodus 12 & 13 .)       Then, in Exodus, the people were next miraculously delivered through the waters of the Red Sea ( Exodus 14 & 15 ), a “type” or precursor of Christian Baptism. But now the people had fallen into complaining. They were hungry. They even blamed Moses for bringing them out of Egypt! In respons...