“Give us this day our daily bread” … what does that mean? On the surface, it’s a simple acknowledgment that the things we need to live all have their source in God, as well as a request that our needs for the day be provided. However, hiding under that simple word “daily” is many centuries’ worth of puzzlement and scholarly debate. The cause of the debate is a troublesome Greek word, the definition of which may open that line to a whole new layer of meaning. If you can stick with me, you’ll see why it matters.
Saint Jerome Coins a Word
The word in question is epiousios (ἐπιούσιος, Matthew 6:11 SBLGNT; Luke 11:3 SBLGNT): The word did not exist before they appeared in Matthew and Luke. If Jesus spoke to his disciples in either Hebrew or Aramaic, we have a further problem: we don’t have texts in either language predating the Greek. We have texts in Syriac, a close cousin to Aramaic, but the Syriac Matthew and Luke are most likely translations of the Greek. Greek had perfectly good words for “daily” — hēmera, kathēmerinos (closer in sense to “ordinary” or “usual”), and ephēmeros (“for the day”). In fact, hēmera is also in Luke 11:3. Why coin a new word?
We have one possible clue. Saint Jerome, the fourth-century scholar who translated Scripture into Latin, had received a copy of the Aramaic “Gospel of the Hebrews,” which now exists only in fragments (i.e., words and phrases found in other writings). In writing of the Lord’s Prayer in that Gospel, Jerome glosses the Aramaic word as meaning crastinus (“tomorrow’s”; that is, belonging to tomorrow). So perhaps Jesus is saying, “Give enough sustenance today to get through to tomorrow,” right? This would fit with the end of the chapter, where Jesus advises us not to worry about the future (Matthew 6:25-34).
But this won’t do. First, epiousios also appears in Luke’s version, which is shorter and occurs in a different context that doesn’t so neatly end in a “don’t worry” passage. Second, Greek had plenty of words sufficient to translate such a thought without having to mint new koine. Finally, whatever St. Jerome thought of the Gospel of the Hebrews, instead of using crastinus he created a Latin neologism of his own: supersubstantialis. To make matters more confusing, he translated epiousios as cotidianus (i.e., quotidianus, “daily”) in the Lucan parallel, giving us the redundancy, “Give us our daily bread every day.”
So, what was Jesus really saying?
Being and Superbeing
First, let’s break epiousios down. According to Dr. Brant Pitre, epiousios is a portmanteau word, or “frankenword,” created by joining the preposition epi (over, above, before) with an adjective formed from the feminine noun ousia. In the Greek Scriptures, ousia is usually translated as “what one has, substance, goods, property”. However, ousia was also used in Greek philosophy, most notably by Plato and Aristotle, to signify substance or essence — what a being truly is. To reflect this mashup, St. Jerome hooked the preposition super (= epi) to the adjective form of substantia (= ousia). This gives us supersubstantialis, which St. Thomas More brought into English as supersubstantial.
To understand substance (or essence), let’s look at chairs. The differences between a barstool, a La-Z-Boy, a drummer’s throne, a divan, and a wicker swing are their accidents. But each of these examples, though made in different shapes and with different materials, carries with it a quality in common with the others that we can call “chair-ness”—their substance. Substance is what gives beings—anything that “be s”—their fundamental identity or nature. God’s ineffable Name, “I AM WHO AM” (Exodus 3:14 DRA), also reveals His essence: God is Being in its fullness (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 212-213).
To say, then, that a being is supersubstantial is to say it’s more than just real, that its being transcends ordinary being. The idea that there could be anything more real, more substantial, than those concrete beings we know of here—that’s a tough concept to grasp, even now. We call the supernatural world and its beings immaterial, or spiritual, but in our modern mindset, these words have come to imply a lack of reality. This is the exact opposite of the truth: God and His angels are more real than we are. They are epiousios.
Our Supernatural Bread
If St. Jerome’s reading in Matthew is correct, then, what we ask for is not simply today’s bread, or bread sufficient until tomorrow, but for bread that has transcendent substance — bread that’s not of this world. Give us this day our supernatural bread. Or even our heavenly bread. As for the Lucan parallel, translating Scripture from their source languages into Latin would be a massive task for one person, even someone as brilliant as St. Jerome. So, it wouldn’t be surprising if he simply lost track of the difference and forgot to correct it.
Saint. Cyril of Jerusalem picked up on this reading in his Catechetical Lectures (op. cit., 23:15). So did St. Cyprian in his treatise on the Lord’s Prayer (Treatises IV:18). So too St. John Cassian (Conferences 9:21) and St. John Damascene (An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 4:13). Tertullian (On Prayer, 6) and St. Augustine of Hippo (Enchiridion, 116) argued that the phrase could be understood either way. Saint Thomas Aquinas, interestingly, also felt that either meaning was useful in helping us to merit the good (Summa Theologiae II-II, Q. 83 A. 9 resp.). The Catechism of the Catholic Church supports both readings (CCC 2837).
“As Often As You Eat the Bread”
The Jews of the time would have immediately understood “supernatural bread” to be a reference to the manna from heaven with which God fed the Israelites on their journey to Canaan (Exodus 16; Joshua 5:10-12), and which they expected the Messiah to bring with him (cf. John 6:30-35; see Pitre, Ch. 4). However, as we’ve seen, the Church Fathers also saw it pointing forward to the Bread of the Eucharist. Small surprise that many liberal Christian Scripture scholars resist such a translation. “Oh, no! Jesus couldn’t possibly have meant that! The bread of the Eucharist is only a symbol!”
Even if the Eucharist were only bread and wine shared in a symbolic communal meal—which is neither how the early Church understood it nor what the Catholic Church teaches today—what of it? Bread is a staple in the diets of most grain-growing cultures, while wine is and was a staple of the Mediterranean world. Put another way, they weren’t merely treats or even regular but special meals like a Sunday pot roast dinner. They were things people ate every single day.
If we follow the logic of the symbolism, we see that the Eucharistic meal isn’t something we can indulge in sporadically and do without the rest of the year. If it’s our daily bread, then daily we must eat it; at least frequently and regularly, like the Sunday pot roast dinner.
When Jesus taught the words of the Institution to St. Paul, he said, “Do this, as often as you [do] it, in remembrance of me;” St. Paul added, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). We must proclaim the death of the Lord, not merely mention it in passing. We aren’t dependent on God only now and again; our very existence, both material and spiritual, depends on His continued action. Consequently, the Bread of the Eucharist must be a staple of our spiritual diet.
Bread in Abundance
From the very beginning, the Christian Church had to invent a new language with which to convey the fullness of Jesus’ teachings. All too often, they had to pour new wine into old wineskins, as it were. But St. Jerome left us a valuable key to unlocking the enigma of epiousios: we have been granted our own manna for our journey to our promised land in the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus, the Messiah and new Moses. And we can have it every day.
Both meanings, daily and supernatural, are profitable for our spiritual lives. But if it’s not always practical for all of us to eat the supernatural bread of the Eucharist daily, we can remember that we are one people and that we depend on God for all things, including the natural bread we eat. Nevertheless, the bread “for the day” (ephēmeros) reminds us that our own lives and our own world are ephemeral; that is, only for now. The supersubstantial bread—Jesus, the Bread of Life—is for eternity.
Let us pray that we may have that bread in abundance (cf. John 10:10).
(Note: This is a revision of an article originally published in Catholic Stand on Feb. 11, 2017.)
4 thoughts on “Give Us This Day Our Supersubstantial Bread”
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Dear Antony ,
Thank you for your very informative commentary on “daily bread .” Your explanation of the original Greek text has given me a greater insight into the meaning of the Lord’s Prayer.
As a Jew ,I can also relate to the significance of bread . My Rabbi recently gave a talk on this very subject .
This is a summary.
A Jewish meal begins with a blessing over bread and then the sharing of bread together……”.Blessed are You, our God ,who brings forth bread from the earth.” Jesus would have recited the same words on many occasions .
But bread does’nt come from the earth — so the blessing ought to have referred to the grain ,not the finished product, bread.
However, keenly aware of the labor that goes into bread ,the Rabbis of the Talmud conjured up an Eden like existence where fresh loaves actually grew on trees.So we have the moral lesson against taking the bread we eat for granted.
But there is more .The Rabbis perceived time as being divided into three eras : a mythical past, when everything was perfect and Eden like ,and when bread growing on trees could be be eaten without labor ; the reality of time now ,the era of historical time in which we live ,when we get our bread with difficulty so that we are lucky to get food at all ; and a hoped for time to come ,a messianic age at the end of days when paradise would return as in the days of the Garden of Eden.
So this is a statement of faith in a time to come when all will have enough to eat ,free from the backbreaking work that that is now required by most of the world’s population just to put food on the table.
The Israelites ate the manna (means “what is it?”) and yet that first generation of the Exodus from Egypt was almost totally denied entrance into the Promised Land. So, it isn’t simply consuming the bread that begets salvation, it is a process of sanctification that brings us into the presence of the Holy Spirit of the Living God. You’re not saved by bread alone. Mark Twain pointed out that “Christ died to make men holy.”
It’s interesting watching someone untie the equivalent of a Gordian air knot.