Broken Bread and Burning Hearts

I am not simply a brain.
I am a man of flesh and blood.
I am both intellectual enlightenment and bone wrapped in sinew.

Yesterday's Gospel reading of the disciples on the road to Emmaus
made me pause to reflect on this interplay in my life
between intellectual understanding and the physical world.

When God calls,
He calls not only through the lure of intellectual truth and rational discourse.
Such study was how I first came to appreciate the Truth Catholic.
But that discovery by itself didn't suffice.

God also threw the curve ball of sacramental presence,
bodily signs....
physical things that truly exist in space and time,
and yet
they contain, reflect, communicate the Divine Love.

The disciples on the road to Emmaus
felt their hearts burning within them
as the Risen Christ explained the Scriptures to them.


The Socratic Method made flesh,
the questions and answers that bantered about in our minds,
Q and A
causing us to ask,
what is this really all about?

But that intellectual thrust and parry by itself
is not enough, is never enough.

They came to know Him in the breaking of the bread.
The crusty, day-old truth,
of the eighth day celebraton.
Simple bread,
become His flesh,
simple bread,
entering our hearts.

The way to a man's soul?
Through his stomach.