Give Us This Day...

“Give us this day our daily bread” is a line most of us can recite by heart, but we rarely stop to ask what the Church is putting on our lips right before Holy Communion.

In this episode, we walk step by step through the Communion Rite and show why the Our Father is more than a familiar group prayer. Its “daily bread” ultimately points to the Eucharist, the super substantial bread that truly sustains the Christian life.

From there, we linger on the centurion’s words,

“Lord, I am not worthy… only say the word.”

Christ is the Word, and in Communion He does not just come to us, He speaks Himself into our lives to heal, sanctify, and save.

We also get practical. What does thanksgiving after Communion actually look like in real life, especially with distractions, noise, or small kids? Drawing from St. Louis de Montfort and the Church’s tradition, we offer a simple way to approach this moment with freedom and focus.

Then we take on a topic that often sparks strong reactions, the communion rail. Beyond practical benefits, we explore its deeper meaning as a threshold where heaven and earth meet, where Christ comes to His people, and where the Church’s chaotic beauty gathers around ordered worship.

Finally, we connect everything to the dismissal. The word Mass comes from sending. You are not just dismissed, you are sent on mission.

Learn more about the Cristeros and join the movement:

https://thecristeros.org

If you have ever wanted to move from attending Mass to truly praying it, this is a concrete place to begin.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

But that moment, right, Lord, I am not worthy that you, Christ, should enter under my roof, but only say the word. He is the word. So speak yourself into my life. Speak by your own means, by your own power into my life as I receive you, the word incarnate here. Right. So we're it's an interesting. I've always been fascinated by that. It's a pardon the pun, it's a play on the words.

Why The Our Father Matters

SPEAKER_02 0:29

So uh welcome to Christerocast. I'm Patrick Mason, and I'm once again joined by uh Father Mitchell Brown of Sacred Art Cathedral. And we're gonna finish up going through your book, Father, on praying the Mass in Linna. And just for anybody that's out there listening, if uh you found these uh uh videos uh helpful or or worthwhile, please consider liking and subscribing and sharing it. Uh it really does make a difference uh with the algorithms and all the clouds and all the other things out there um to help us get this this great message out out far and and wide, which is actually one of the topics that we're gonna be going through, which is spreading messages far and wide. Um so, Father, we've throughout Lent we went through how to pray the Mass and we uh now are at the end of the Mass, right? We we're at the point where we've we talked a lot last time about communion, um, or last episode that we went through this, we talked about communion and and um and and the consecration. Uh but now let's go through that a little more. Uh, we didn't really talk about the Our Father and the other the other half of the Eucharistic prayer. So why don't we go through that? What is the Our Father and why is it so important to us? And why do we say it in every Mass? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

So after uh the Eucharistic prayer, we enter into the the communion rite of the Mass. And so starting with the Our Father, the the prayer of our Lord Himself that He taught His disciples to pray when they were wondering how to do so. In the heart of that, it talks about give us this day, our daily bread. And when you read some of the the Fathers on this or even in the catechism, right, that that phrase can mean a lot of things. It can mean give us the things we need for this day, be provident to us. It can mean give us the food for the morrow, so the things that we need for tomorrow be provident into the future. But it can also mean give us the super substantial bread that we need to survive. And obviously we know that that super substantial bread is the Eucharist. It's this uh this wonderful gift that God has given us in his son on Holy Thursday that we just celebrated to uh give not just nourishment to our bodies, but uh but spiritual refreshment to our souls. And so as we're preparing to receive communion, we pray this prayer with that in the heart because we're asking uh this great gift from God, which he's about to give us. And in a sense, it's it's a preparation to receive it worthily because that communion allows us to be in further communion with the Father, right? So we're praying to the Father for the gift of his son. The gift of his son helps us to relate to the father. It's a nice little theological circle, but it it's there uh in that moment because we're as close to God as we can be in this life, right? And we're praying to him as he's present on the altar and he's leading us back to the Father. And so we have that moment to use the prayers of our Lord Himself as He's present, giving us to His Father in sacrifice.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

It was kind of like you talked about last time the Eucharistic prayers. You you're like, I'm gonna use the Eucharistic prayer that was written by a saint. It's like, well, if you're gonna pray, maybe use the prayer that was written by God himself. Like this is is this the only prayer that God himself gives us? That I can't think of another one.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Well, in in a strict sense, but like all the psalms, you know, all of the prayers in scripture are from God, uh through through human authors. But this is the one that we know Jesus taught his disciples.

A Prayer Spoken By God

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Like this is the one spoken not through a human, but but but through the voice of God Himself, incarnate on earth. I actually think of you know, our patron is Guadalupe. I remember having a conversation with uh uh a friend of mine once after we had just gotten to see the Tilma in Mexico City. Um and it's uh it's uh it's actually Carl Anderson, he's an expert on Guadalupe, he's probably the one, in my opinion, the foremost expert alive today on Guadalupe. And um we were sitting there and and talking about some of the beauty of having just experienced the Tilma. And I don't remember where who came up with this idea first, but we we ran with it was the idea is that Guadalupe is all these miraculous images we have, like uh the Divine Mercy image or Our Lady of La Leche and all the weird Catholic images that we have that are miraculous. You know, there's so many, that's a that's a whole other episode. That's a deep dive of all the crazy miraculous images and statues and things that we have in the Catholic Church. But Guadalupe is not an image painted by man. Guadalupe is an image painted by God of his mother, much like the Our Father is is not uh is not a prayer inspired by God through men. It is a prayer given to us by God Himself with His own voice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Yeah. And he says when you pray, say these words, our Father, right? Right. This is the pattern. And St. Augustine tells us that there's nothing we can ask for properly that wouldn't in some way be related to the petitions of E our Father. And if we're praying for something that can't be related to one of them, we probably shouldn't be praying for it. So uh he I think it's in the book, he relates so many of the things that we can pray to one of the lines in there in in some fashion. Some of them seem maybe tangential, but it's because that prayer is so wide-reaching that it affects everything in our life.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Well, and how and how beautiful is it that when Christ teaches us to pray, he starts with our father. He's he's is he's literally bringing us in as his brother to go see dad. And I think for men, especially Catholic men, how powerful is that? I remember going to watch a movie Big Fish with my roommate in college, and uh it's about a dad and his son, and the son being disillusioned with his dad and then coming back into a relationship with his dad. And I think we both cried during the movie because like what man doesn't have daddy issues in one way or the other, or what what human being I should say doesn't have daddy issues in one way or the other. And Christ is like, yeah, I get it, but I got the perfect dad for you, our father. He's there, and so it's it's just great that we with that that he gives us those words from the very beginning. When he teaches us to pray, it's like always go to him as your dad.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Yeah, as a Providence-caring dad who sometimes has to correct, but is always and able to do the right thing for you.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Yeah. So, and I I also I can't remember if this came from a homily or something I read or or whatever it was, is that even when you're not saying praying the Our Father, maybe this is what you're talking about with St. Augustine, is all of your prayers should in some ways be structured as the Our Father is structured, like you're going to him. Uh, when we as Christeros do our nightly examination, that we do the acts format, we adore, then we ask forgiveness for our sins, and we thank God for the gifts he's given us, and then we go to him with our requests for our daily bread. Um, so I guess all of our prayers in some ways should be structured like the Our Father.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Yeah, because our Father who art in heaven, that's acknowledging something about him, that's adoring him as God and recognizing that I am not the Father, I am not God. And then from that flow all the things about uh forgiveness and and the petitions that we have for ourselves and for the world, for the church. Um that's that's a very uh paternoster theme, if you will. Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

And so you give you so you pray to the Father and you say, Give us this bread, our daily bread, and then we go up and we receive our daily bread, right? In in communion. And and it's shortly thereafter that uh, you know, we do the Agnes Day, Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. And then you do the the plea of the centurion, which is you know, through my uh what does he say? It's a I'm not worthy. I am not worthy that you should enter my roof, but only say the words and my soul shall be held. And then we approach and we become united with Christ, and and I guess in the same way we become united with the Father.

SPEAKER_03 8:19

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Yeah, and that that plea of the centurion is interesting in that moment because after the Our Father, uh in the lit in the Roman liturgy at least, we don't often pray to Christ. We pray to the Father through the Son. But after the Our Father, a lot of the prayers are directed to the Son because He's present on the altar. We're gonna talk to him. He's right there. Right. Um, but that moment, right, Lord, I am not worthy that you, Christ, should enter under my roof, but only say the word. He is the word. So speak yourself into my life. Speak by your own means, by your own power into my life as I receive you, the word incarnate here, right? So we're it's an interesting, I've always been fascinated by that. It's a pardon the pun, it's a play on the words to help us understand that he by his power is coming into our life with this communion, with something that looks like bread but is his body, to recreate us, to salve uh sanctify us and make us holy, uh, to save us from our sins. So him speaking himself into our life is what's happening at communion.

Why Bring Back A Communion Rail

SPEAKER_02 9:20

Yeah, and then we there's St. Lou de Montfort, who has this total consecration to Christ through Mary, says that even as we approach the communion, that those are the words, we should utter the words in our hearts to the centurion. He said, one utter him once to the Father for all the times that you've fallen short as a son, once to your brother for all the times that you've not stood with him, and once to the Holy Spirit for uh all the times that you fail to let the Spirit uh lead you in your life, and then you receive him in. And and in our church, we brought back the communion rail. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, why why do we have why why are we going backwards, Father? Like they we got rid of that thing decades ago. Why'd you why did you spend so much time and effort and money to bring back a communion rail that we threw out decades ago? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Well, that you'd be hard-pressed to find a place where the church actually said to get rid of these things. But beyond that, there are practical reasons. It's a nice uh transition point, even visually, between the knave and the sanctuary. It's easy to help people that want to kneel for communion. There's something very sturdy and stable. But beyond that, theologically, liturgically, symbolically, the communion rail shows the uh ascent from this world to the next, right? They're even in in our church, they're a couple steps into the sanctuary, uh, symbolizing the ascent into heaven, very small steps, but there's there, that's that's there. And it's symbolic as well as the priest enters through the gates of the communion rail of Christ entering into heaven at his ascension to plead for the people, to intercede for us, to pray for us on our behalf to the Father. And so the same, that's what the priest is doing at Mass. He's in persona Christi Capitis praying for the people, and then Christ returns to them at the communion rail to give them new life, to give them everything that they need in the form of himself, right? He is the fulfillment of all our desires. So that communion rail is a place where man and God meet, where where the this world and the next, where earth and heaven become one in Christ Jesus, which is what he did when he first became incarnate anyway. So the rail, while it has a lot of practical and and beautiful applications, it's a place where we can come to meet God. And it's symbolic of all that he wants to give us.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Well, and everything we've talked about all through Lynn has been how do you not just attend Mass, but how do you pray Mass, right? I mean, how do you actually um uh participate in the Mass and not just be sitting somewhere that, well, things are going on around you. And a lot of that, I think, from what you've explained, comes from the actions that we take, the postures of prayer that we take, uh, the physical things in the Mass, like the incense and the music and the things that touch our ear. And now, here again, like you said, once again, is now we're approaching and we're kneeling, and we all kneel at the communion rail. And from a practical standpoint, by the way, it's cut cut communion lines in half because we all just crowd there and we get there, and then you're just kneeling there at the at the foot of the altar. You're kneeling there as Christ comes to you and and and is and is and you receive him. Um, and you have time to pray before the priest gets to you to to give you communion, and it really is just a it's a beautiful participation in communion. It's not just oh, get in the queue for the line and and wait your turn in line. It's like, no, here we are. We are kneeling at the foot of the altar and Christ is coming down to us.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Yeah. And there's a beauty in that moment because this it's not often that I will say this regarding the liturgy, but there's a beautiful chaos in the sense of people just come up, right? They can get there through any of the aisles in the church, they just move forward to meet Christ, right? Which is what I imagine would have happened when he entered into a town and a village. They didn't orderly line up like we Americans prefer, say, Lord, my requests are here. Here's my form and my evaluation and everything, right? They bombarded him. They tore the roof off of houses so they can see him, right? And so there's a there's a very biblically accurate moment there when people are just flocking to Christ. They know they need him, they want to come forward to be with him, and he meets them. He he doesn't stay aloof, he comes to be that with them right there.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

It's so funny. So there's totally is a chaotic beauty because you have on one side of the communion rail all of us like, you know, pressing the crowd as you were. And I have, you know, I have kids in tow, and some of the kids are like kind of like peeking through the communion rail. I'm worried they're gonna trip up the father or deacon as he's coming by. But then on the other side of the communion rail, it's like ordered and nice, and everybody's, you know, you're persisting very orderly, whereas on one side we're chaos, but uh on God's side it's it's it's total order as well. And it's just it's the dichotomy of the Catholic Church, right? Like at one time we could be but something both chaotic and ordered in the same moment, and that is the beauty of the church.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Yeah. And and from my perspective, you know, I see this much more easily when I'm distributing it at a communion rail than just in a line to see all of the types of people that come to communion because I can see them as I'm moving along, right? The young, the old, the aged, the infirm, the sick, the happy, the joyful, those with new babies, those that just lost their parents, those everything and everyone in between, right? You can just see them all there presenting themselves to Christ. Um, and it's not that that's not there in other forms of communion, but just seeing one at a time, it's harder to recognize that. And it's it's very beautiful for me as a priest to see all of these situations and all of these hearts and all of these souls coming to Christmas.

After Communion Thanksgiving And Posture

SPEAKER_02 14:47

You're standing in personum christum looking on your church. That's awesome. And then afterwards, what I mean, so we receive communion, we go back and we we pray. I think there was a controversy uh about, oh, is it can you sing while you're in the pews? Do you participate in the song or do you pray privately? I mean, there's you know, any any controversy that can be ginned up will be ginned up on the internet. But what is the what is the proper thing to do after we receive communion? How do we dispose ourselves?

SPEAKER_01 15:16

At that point, thank God, right? The choir may sing something, everyone may be singing the hymn, the there there may be silence, right? There's there are options at this time for the technicalities of what's going to go on, each of which has their place and and an aspect that it brings out in the communion. But for us, we have just received the living God. We have to thank him, right? And sometimes that is with silent prayer. Most daily masses, we don't have any singing or anything. So it's a time to reflect and and thank the Lord. If there is a hymn going on, you're free to sing it. You don't have to. If the choir is singing something that is uh, you know, polyphonic or there's chant and you're not familiar with it, you can just enter into their singing, right? There are a lot of different ways to do this, and it will look different even from heart to heart, soul to soul. But the important thing in that moment is it's a time of thanksgiving to render unto God thanks for what he has done for us in communion.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

Yeah, and and then I was gonna say, I've heard this, I I get this advice from priest once before, because again, my my time in the pew is sometimes chaotic with all the little kids. But you know, he the priest told me he's like you don't have to just kneel. Like it you you should your posture that you take when you go back to the to the to the pew should be one that's gonna allow you to do what you just said, which is to thank God, right? And I've been to churches where everybody stands after communion as a as a congregation. I don't know if that's proper or not, but like even there'll be times like my two-year-old is wanting, it's into mass, they're hungry, they're ready to get out of there, and all I could do is kind of sit there and hold them. But if that allows me to to thank my God, that's what I should be doing in that moment. Um, entering into communion with my creator.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Yeah. And this thought is just striking me now, but you think of our blessed mother. In the presence of God Almighty, the word incarnate, from the moment he was, she gave her fiat and he was incarnate in her womb to his crucifixion, then in his resurrection. She wasn't kneeling for 33 years in his august presence, right? She had to care for him, she had to tend to him, she had to bathe him, she had to do all these things. She had to rejoice with him at a wedding, she had to enjoy his company, she had to hold his dead body on Good Friday. And we so all of those are are, if you will, proper postures toward the Lord. He wants everything of our life oriented to him, not just solemn moments of prayer, but everything. And so in a moment after communion, if you're having to to deal with your small children, just so that they can, you know, feel loved in that moment or at least paid attention to, that's fine, right? You're doing that with Christ in you now. It's not just you. Um and there may be times when you are able to kneel and pray that maybe sometimes you have to sit, maybe you have to walk around with them so that they can find some sleep, right? Um all of those things, you know, the the church is very broad in in these kind of moments. And there are general um prescriptions of of what to do as a group, but we can't impose that on everybody because there are going to be those situations where I'm not gonna start yelling at you because you're walking around with your kid when everyone's kneeling or something. It may be what's best.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

And this reminds me now of what you wrote in the book at communion, which was you didn't even write it yourself. You basically said, This is too good not to just recreate in whole, this is uh Archbishop Sheen soon to be beatified. Um, and you wrote you wrote something, or he wrote something in there that I'd never really thought before is like communion is not a time to just receive Christ. It is a time to give all that you are and all that you have to Christ. And what you just said was Christ wants it all. He wants your sorrows, he wants your weaknesses, he wants your strengths, he wants every single aspect of you, um, the good, the bad, and the ugly, as it were. He wants it all, and this is the time to do it.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Yeah, I think he goes so far as to say if you come to the communion rail and do not give of yourself, you are a parasite on the body of Christ. Wonderful Fulton Sheen. Uh but yeah, we're supposed to give of ourselves. And it doesn't just mean at communion, it means our whole life. So when we leave from mass to give ourselves to the to others in service and charity and love, to be able to give of ourselves in our time so that others can know Christ, right? If we just stop with communion at the communion rail or in the moment of communion at mass, we are parasites because we're just taking and not giving on.

Mass Means Mission And Sending

SPEAKER_02 19:44

And then to that point is that God doesn't want it to end there. In fact, in some ways, that's the start of the journey because from there we are dismissed and we say, Thanks be to God, it's all over, right? I mean, that's or but I mean that's how some people jokingly take it. And it's kind of sounds like that. You know, it me says it is what is it, the mass is finished or it is finished.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

It's it's technically go forth, it is the mass, right? Uh and the word mass means sent. So we could, you know, loosely say, Go forth, you're on a mission, right? You have a purpose now. You look at the apostles, when Jesus ascended, he didn't say, All right, we had our time together, relax, right? He said, Go teach all nations. St. Mark puts it, go teach every creature. So we have St. Francis and St. Anthony preaching to the fish and the birds, right? Every creature needs to be evangelized by the power of Christ. So when the priest or the deacon says, Go forth, the mass is ended, that's not a nice calm suggestion. It's saying, get out of here, scram, we're done here. We have to go teach the world.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

That's that's amazing. So then the word mass comes from sending. So the mass is not what you'd think is like, oh, this should be the the consecrato or something like you know, something to tie that. But no, the the word mass that we use every day is the sending. So the sending is over, but that means you've now been sent. So go out there.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Yeah. And that's what we get to do all of this Easter season, right? We read from Acts of the Apostles every day, which is them responding to Christ saying, Go forth, baptize, teach. We have the whole Acts of the Apostles where we see them doing that, sometimes even losing their heads for it. They're suffering and dying for the sake of Christ so that others can know him. And that's what all of us have to do. That's our baptismal promise to live that out. Our confirmation gives us the strength to to witness to the faith uh in a public way, sometimes even when it has persecution. So when we're done with our Sunday obligation, the week is just starting, and we have every day that week to live for Christ publicly.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

And I just think that the more I think about it, this this is the sending. Like if you're about to go off into war, this is the moment when the general has gathered you together as the troops and said, Okay, this is what we're gonna do, these are the Tools you're going to need to do it. Here's how we're going to execute on this plan. That is the this is the the the mass is the the planning operation, right? The of D-Day, right? And then the rest of the week is is the storming of the beaches or the or the fighting in the trenches. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Yeah. And that that's why it relates to the Our Father. I give us this day, our daily bread. Give us this moment with you on Sunday to strengthen us for whatever's coming this week. Because not everyone can come to daily mass, so they can pray on Sunday for the strength they need to go through the week, knowing that they can come back to meet him again next Sunday, to be refreshed, to receive that super substantial bread, that nourishment, and just to continue that cycle to be able to be refreshed and renew it, recharged on divine grace to go through everything that happens in life during the week.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

And you don't need anything else. You don't need uh, you know, 12 master's degrees and and uh and uh you know a podcast or whatever else is like all you need is Christ, right? It's uh back to John chapter six. It's like you have the words of eternal life. Where else are we to go? And and the Franciscans and the apostles taking nothing but sandals and sackcloths as they go on the road. I mean, you have literally in the mass everything you need to be sent out.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Yeah, he gives us everything we need to do the work he sent us to do.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

And we have to do that. I mean, that's what he's that's what we as Christians are called to do, right? And every one of us is called to be a missionary disciple.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Yeah, it'll be a terrifying judgment day if we return empty-handed.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Well, this is great, Father. I mean, it's so much, and it's such such a great way. Thank you for going through this book with us throughout Lent, and now we're into Easter, and um I hope that this Easter all of us can go out there and be missionary disciples, and that we've learned to pray the Mass now and not just attend it, and that we'll uh find ourselves better brothers to Christ and and warriors for Christ, really. Yeah, that's the hope.

Closing Prayer And Final Sendoff

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Thank you, Father. Could you close us off with a prayer? In the name of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit, and fill the church, fill our hearts, our minds, our souls, our desires, our bodies. That we may be perfect temples of your presence. May everything that we say, think, and do redound to your glory, and open our hearts to further grace and inspiration to draw more people to you through Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Thank you, Father, and thank you for everybody for watching. And like we said, please like, subscribe, and share this with others. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Thank you for watching this episode of Christerocast. For more information on the Christeros or to join the movement, check out our website at theCristeros.org. That's theChristeros with an S.org. There you could find our daily reflection series as well as many of our publications and articles. Thank you for watching, and viva Christore.