Jesus answered, “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” (John 6.49-51)
Still considered one of the ten most influential books in the United States, although it was written already in 1946, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl remains a must-read for anyone who questions the meaning of life. Written after Frankl was released from the German concentration camps at the end of World War II, the book is an exploration of his personal search for meaning while suffering imprisonment in those inhumane and inconceivable camps.
Perhaps his most famous quote from the book is found in a single sentence–Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how’. As he watched innumerable men die in the concentration camps, while others survived the horrendous conditions, he decided that some part of it might be explained in a prisoner’s attitude, particularly the ability to find meaning even in these dire circumstances.
He writes, “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” Offering a clear-cut example from his experience in the camps, he explained, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.”
He continues, “They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
As most people can attest, at least those who have lived for a length of years, the search for meaning is, as Frankl said, pivotal for our efforts and for our direction in life. Without discovering a meaning to our existence, our lives become directionless and pointless. And that meaning, as Frankl concedes, is best found in doing for others.
“The true meaning of life,” he writes, “is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche. . . Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself–be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.” He then says, “The more one forgets himself–by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love–the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. In other words,” he concludes, “Self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
Although his experiences were almost a century in the past, his conclusions remain radically correct, unchanged with the passing years, uncompromised by the shifting winds of time. If we are to thrive as human beings, we simply have to focus, not on ourselves, but on others. Transcending ourselves, or, as the Christian mindset would call dying to self, we expend our energies, especially the energy of love, on others, allowing them to thrive and, in so doing, finding ourselves thriving through this act of self-giving.
Essentially, this is the same message that Rabbi Jesus is evoking today when he expounds on securing eternal life, not by feeding ourselves, but by feeding others. Placing himself as a flesh and blood example of a life lived for and with others, here he uses the example of himself as living bread, as he will later use others examples such as himself as the good shepherd or the gateway or the vine. His point, whatever the image, remains the same–he lays down his life for others so that they might live.
As we know, this image later becomes associated with the Christian theology of the eucharist, but its origins are found in the feeding of the multitude, poor and hungry people who have nothing to eat, finding themselves with full stomachs through the gift of a few loaves and a handful of fish, the lunch of a boy who was willing to give it all away so that others might have a bite to eat.
With that experience fresh in his listeners’ minds, the Rabbi expounds on the gift of self that becomes the bedrock of his teachings, both in word and in deed, emphasizing always that our responsibility as his followers is “to feed them ourselves,” as he instructed his first followers, a careful and a cautious coterie who wants to send the crowds away to fend for themselves.
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” Rabbi Jesus says, “whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” Again, the point is clear–he is the one who gives food to a starving world, in this instance his own life, so that others might live and might have a reason to live.
Rabbi Jesus understands this to be the purpose for his being sent by God, the meaning of his life defined by his giving of himself to others, most especially to the diseased, the downtrodden, and the despised, in other words, to those who have no one else who cares for or about them. His walk in this world always brought him to an encounter with these outcasts, their cries heard by his ears, their wounds healed by his hands, their tears dried by his touch.
For those “few in number,” as Victor Frankl called the men who gave their last piece of bread to others, the call and the challenge is the same, to become living bread for others, literally and figuratively, as did Rabbi Jesus, so that these starving souls might find sustenance in a world otherwise ruled by selfishness and by self-absorbed blind men who can see no further than their own stomachs, blinded as they are by self-interest and self-promotion.
There is an old story told about an aged and learned monk who was often approached by others because of his wisdom and perception. Interestingly, he also was known to answer every question with a question, leaving those who came to him with something to stretch their souls. As the story goes, one day a monk from another monastery came to him, saying, “I have come here on retreat and I was wondering if you could give me a question to ponder.”
The old monk thought for a moment and said, “My question for you is this–what do they need?” Disappointed, the other monk responded, “Perhaps I did not make myself clear before. I am here to work on my own spiritual life, not to reflect upon my calling. Could you give me a question to ponder along those lines?”
“In that case,” the old monk answered, “the question would be–what do they really need?” The young man walked away, unsure and unsettled by the question, unaware that the old man had pointed him to the secret of a life well-lived, a life that is spent in finding what other people need, not in finding what we ourselves may want.
Rather than making the same mistake as that young man, we should hold onto that question for dear life because, in the end, our lives may depend on it, at least any happiness or satisfaction that we may hope to find in our days here on earth. What do they really need? Using this question as our guide in this world, we look at those people who have been placed upon our path–especially those displaced by the powerful–determined to answer that question, and in providing for their needs, finding the purpose that we were sent from heaven to accomplish.
Granted, such an approach to living requires a reorientation, a reprioritizing, a reconstruction of our lives, removing from front and center our own wants, replacing these with the needs of the less fortunate, the least likely, and the last in the line. If we succeed in doing so, we become one of the “few in number,” those called to follow the Galilean Rabbi who actually follows his footsteps rather than skipping left and right of his way, never actually putting our feet where his footsteps are.
Our sense of purpose and our hunger for meaning in this world come, then, when we forfeit our own wants for the needs of others, feeding the crowd as Rabbi Jesus did, offering the few fish and the two loaves of bread that we hold in our hands. In losing ourselves, we find ourselves; in mirroring the Galilean, we come to know who we are.
Some years ago, a wealthy and successful lawyer in Florida had a minor car accident, suffering no real injuries. Still, afterwards, his wife began to receive a number of phone calls, offering condolences for his death. Curious how the misunderstanding had occurred, he realized that the county bar association had accidentally published an obituary for him in its newsletter.
Reading his own obituary was an unsettling and unwelcomed event for him, prompting him to re-examine his purpose and his priorities. He pondered the question if anybody really was better off because he had lived. Was he, he asked himself, living the life that God meant him to live? With these questions directing his quest, he reevaluated and redirected his life.
Deciding to give up his law practice, he, along with his wife and teenage son, decided to become house parents for a home for boys in Georgia, one of the oldest orphanages in the United States. They were put in charge of seven cottages, requiring them to see to the everyday and the emotional needs of these orphaned youth. Later, when considering the changes he had made in his life, the man could honestly say, “Now I’m where God wants me to be in a life that began, instead of ending, with my obituary.”
Near the end of Viktor Frankl’s book, he offered this thought, “What is to give light must endure burning.” Much the same as Rabbi Jesus, Frankl offers in these few words the ways and the means to live a life that has a purpose, a life that has meaning, a life that gives light in a too often too dark world. It only requires that we allow ourselves to endure burning.
–Jeremy Myers
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