There are other hungers- for love, for immortality for life, for affection, for being cared, for forgiveness, for mercy. This hunger can be satiated only by the bread that comes from above. Jesus himself is the living bread that gives life to the world (cf.
Jn 6:51). His body offered for our sake on the cross, his blood shed for the pardon of the sins of humanity is made available to us in the bread and wine to the Eucharist transformed in the consecration.
But the Eucharist does not end with the partaking of the bread and blood of the Lord. It leads us to solidarity with others. The communion with the Lord is necessarily a communion with our fellow brothers and sisters. And therefore the one who is fed and nourished by the very body and blood of Christ cannot remain unaffected when he sees his brothers suffering want and hunger. (
Homily for the Feast of Corpus Christi, 5-30-13)
Therefore the Eucharistic Celebration is much more than simple banquet....
@Illuminator
I do agree with you 100% about the "bread". But the Catholic church again took this into many unintended directions.
God's one and only focus is the redemption plan, and how to execute it in the new covenant, to reconcile humans to Him. If people understand God's intentions, and properly follow Jesus' teaching, there would not be any famines, suffering, wars etc.. Because God's blessings would be poured out on them, just as He told us in the Sermon on the Mount - seek God 1st, then all these things will be added.
Jesus always meant the "bread" to be His body. And the Lord's Prayer
IS a DIY form of receiving the body of Jesus without the church's Eucharist. There is nothing wrong with the Eucharist; it is indeed sacred, as a weekly symbolic celebration of the last supper. But we can receive the body of Jesus spiritually by reciting the Lord's Prayer in our hearts. And we receive it "daily", just as Jesus instructed in the prayer itself. And all churches should teach this point. This is as in the vine and branches parable - "we remain in Him, and He remains in us".
You'll like my parallel description of the Christianity and Judaism in my post
here.
About Protestant churches, I am full of sorrow they don't see the "bread" as the body of Jesus. I used to like some protestant churches after I left the Catholic church years ago. But then when I found this fact about them, I realized all churches have crucial faults in them. And that the only way is to become simply, Christian. As in by the Bible only, uninfluenced by churches agendas.
Protestants would tell you, "Jesus gave this prayer to the Jews" or that "He could not have possibly meant the bread as His body, because He was not dead yet" or because "Paul did not preach it, and Paul was the apostle of the gentiles...". So sad, because Jesus spent a long time in the 2nd half of John chapter 6 explaining about this. Jesus before His death, sitting under a tree and telling the Jews that He was the bread, and to eat His body and drink His blood. But the Protestants continue to insist that's a Catholic thing; it does not concern them.