As was the case last week, our responsorial Psalm
directs us from the first reading right into the heart of the
Gospel. The bread from heaven in our responsorial is, of
course, the manna of our first reading with which God
miraculously fed the Israelites in the desert and which is a
prefiguration of the Eucharist, the bread of Life.
Psalm 78 is quite a lengthy Psalm with a total of 72
verses. Only six of these verses are used in today’s
responsorial. The entire Psalm recounts Israel’s past
beginning with Jacob, continuing through the stay in
Egypt and subsequent deliverance therefrom through the
establishment of David as King. The aim of the Psalmist
is to foster trust in God.
Thus, we have verses 3-4 from the opening of the
Psalm – this is something we heard and we know from
our fathers and so is something we must pass on. In
short: this is our heritage. Then we skip all the way to
verses 23-24, that God feeds the Israelites (us) from
heaven: He “rained” the food down on them, it is
“heavenly bread.” The final stanza is composed of
verses 25 and 54. Our translation of verse 25 says, “The
bread of the mighty was eaten by men.” However, the
Latin Vulgate reads rather differently “Panem angelorum
manducavit homo.” “Man ate the bread of Angels.” The
second part of the final stanza jumps ahead to verse 54,
“And He brought them to this Holy Land, the mountain
which His right hand had won.” It is as if the point of this
bread is to lead them to the Chosen Land.
The “heavenly bread” of the Psalm is the manna of our
first reading, but it is even more a prefiguration of the
Eucharist, “the bread of Life” of our Gospel reading. This
then, is the point of the responsorial from where we
stand, that the Eucharist is given to us to nourish us
spiritually that having eaten of it, we may enter into
everlasting life.