STRENGTHENED BY THE BREAD OF LIFE

Today we resume the “Bread of Life” discourse from John’s Gospel that began two weeks ago. He makes reference to the Jews’ ancestors who ate manna in the desert. These days we would think primarily of Israel wandering in the desert, but faithful Jews would also have known the story of Elijah that we hear today. Strengthened by food and drink in the desert, the angel of the Lord sends him on his forty-day and forty-night journey (the biblical number for a prepa- ration time). Like the food given to Elijah in the desert, Jesus tells his listeners that he is bread for the life of the world.

It is very important that we not stop listening to Jesus after his promise of eternal life—a marvelous promise, but this “reward” is not the only reason we feast on the Bread of Life. We also come to the table to be made strong for the journey of mission, that the whole world might have life in the fullness of Christ. We are compelled, if we have eaten of the bread of life, to go forth in service to all.

Careful readers of the “Treasures” will have noticed that the two columns about the oldest monastic communities in the United States refer to the colonial states. The Louisiana Purchase gained a great treasure for our nation, the Ursuline monastery of New Orleans. Among the greatest pioneers of that city were nuns who came from France on a perilous voyage in 1727, pestered by pirates and tossed by fearsome storms. These were genteel, well-educated Ursulines, yet their first task was to roll up their sleeves and open a hospital to care for the pestilence-ridden colony. Next, they opened a school for girls and launched a plan to educate the women being shipped over from France to marry settlers. In this way, they had enormous influence in molding patterns of fami- ly and domestic life.

At Christmastime in 1814, the threat of a British as- sault on the city was growing. On the terrifying night of January 7, 1815, the women of New Orleans gathered in the monastery chapel to pray that the city be spared from destruction in battle. The mother superior made a vow to have a Mass of Thanksgiving on that date every year should the Americans win. That night, Our Lady of Prompt Succor, to whom the nuns had great devotion, became the protector and patron of this great city.

The convent in the French Quarter is the oldest standing building in the Mississippi valley, and the only surviving building of the French colonial period. The nuns relocated in 1824, but their old monastery is preserved as a museum and archives for the Archdiocese of New Orleans. The school the nuns began, Ursuline Academy, is the oldest continuously operating Catholic school, and school for women, in the United States.