The Desert Table
“Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?”
Timothy Schmalz’s Last Supper statuary decorates a number of Catholic monasteries and retreat centers across the country, if not around the world. The life-sized bronze figure is designed to sit in the center of a large table, surrounded by twelve empty chairs, to evoke an invitation to Jesus’s contemporary disciples to join him at the feast. The figure of Jesus himself, meanwhile, is frozen in the motion of at once breaking the bread and opening his garment to reveal a tortured and emaciated torso, his face once serene and sorrowful, his body oddly hunched and contorted in an unsettling way that could easily be construed as “creepy,” if one for a moment loses focus on the intended message that our ability to feast on the Bread of Life flows from his terrible and infinite sacrifice.
I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
— Jesus Christ, the Son of God (John 6:35)
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
Almighty and merciful God, it is only by your grace that your faithful people offer you true and laudable service: Grant that we may run without stumbling to obtain your heavenly promises; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
I Am the Bread of Life
Suzanne Toolan’s 1966 song inspired by the Bread of Life discourse in John 6 and 11 will probably be remembered as one of the great classics of folk hymnody. Besides being an effective mix of thoroughly Scriptural, melodically simple, and appropriately somber and serious, her composition dropped right as the fascination with vernacular and folk liturgics was taking off among Roman Catholics in the wake of Vatican II. The hymn thus enjoys a broad reception in the Roman church, and also appears in the high church (Anglican and Lutheran) hymnals to draw from the same wells of liturgical renewal.
The featured video is from the original 1970 album Living Spirit featuring Sr. Toolan’s first folk hymns. Unfortunately, more recent interpretations of the hymn have followed a decadent trend in folk Catholic worship, as this performance by the Notre Dame Folk Choir exemplifies. The attempt to skirt third person pronouns for inclusivity’s sake is awkward and grating for those familiar with the original lyrics, if understandable and admirable in its aims. The bigger issue is the cluttering of the accompaniment, with the bongos (!?) and trumpet significantly changing the timbre of the song.
Either rendition, however, should be considered against the classic musical meditations on the same theme, such as Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus. As much value as there is in the dignified representation of the Scriptural mystery of the Bread of Life in contemporary folk idiom, the older tradition evokes a profoundly different pathos, and opens an entirely different kind of contemplative space characterized by gravitas and mystery. May we never overlook the full richness of the many-splendored heritage we receive!
