Quality Time: Baking & Breaking Bread with Our Children
By: Gregg James
Baking then sharing unleavened bread
A fair number of Catholic dads and moms gathered around the school kitchen to bake bread with our children during the First Communion Retreat. Bread baking, one of the many stations the children visited during the retreat, was by far my favorite. Food events always rank high on my list and baking with the children was just plain fun. But, there was something beyond a tasty treat with jam about this bread. Feeding the hungry, sustenance, forgiveness – Bible stories using this symbolism came to mind.
Our esteemed lead chef, Dan Campion, reminded us that unleavened bread is made without yeast thus it can be made quickly, but does not rise and is of a more dense consistency than the bread we usually eat. Dan was helped by Nancy Baranek and Christine Hoverter in the kitchen as parents shepherded groups of children around the stainless steel table.
Sous chef, Baranek really enjoyed helping with the bread baking. She was “very impressed by how well the kids cooperated with each other and how much they enjoyed mixing the dough together as a group. When I was the same age I liked to help my mother bake cookies, and it was always a fun thing to do. I liked the feeling of helping to make something and spending time with my mom and sisters.”
Bread, really any kind of bread, sounded and smelled especially good as we were nearing the noon hour, but clearly there was more, something spiritually significant, we were supposed to impart to our children. It was the first Communion Retreat after all. We were preparing our children for their First Communion, preparing them to be ready to say “YES” to Christ. We were baking the same kind of bread the Hebrews baked during their departure from Egypt. “Since the dough they brought out of Egypt was not leavened, they baked it into unleavened loaves. They had been rushed out of Egypt and had no opportunity even to prepare food for the journey.” Exodus 12:39
Just like the Hebrews departing Egypt we Catholics -- as a community of
believers -- need to be ready to say yes when God beckons us out of bondage.
We need to be ready to receive the grace offered through the Eucharist. Like
manna from Heaven, our little loaves of unleavened bread provided an
opportunity to share with our children the faith that Christ will continue to
sustain and strengthen us on our journey. And, the bread was very tasty with
jam.
