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God delivered the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt through the events recounted in the early chapters of the Book of Exodus.
Yet they still had a lengthy way ahead of them before they would enter the promised land. Although this wilderness journey was not long in miles, it lasted forty years. During that time, God led his people through the desert by a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night (Exodus 13:21). When they cried out to him in hunger, he provided them with manna.
God told Moses that the Israelites were to gather a portion of manna each day, not leaving any over for the following day (Exodus 16:4, 19-21). In this way, they were challenged to actively rely on God for their “daily bread.” On the sixth day of the week, however, the people were to collect a double portion, so that they could rest on the seventh day, the sabbath (16:22-26).
Some scholars seek an explanation for manna in nature, yet the Israelites recognized this strange substance as a gift from God—a supernatural phenomenon that expressed his generosity and his care for them. Extraordinary quantities of manna were continuously available to them except on the sabbath (Exodus 16:26)—a strange lack if the manna was simply a natural occurrence—and sustained them over quite a protracted duration of time. The Israelites received the manna as divine provision, bread rained down on them from heaven (16:4).
Manna was a foreshadowing of the Eucharist. Jesus himself compared the bread of the Eucharist to the manna given to the Israelites by God in the desert (John 6:32-33, 49-50, 58). In fact, many realities described in the Old Testament—persons, events, or other details—anticipate those fully revealed in the New. As the early Christians pondered the Scriptures, they realized that the ancient Israelites’ record of the first stages of God’s plan of salvation for human beings contained many images pointing to its fulfillment in Christ and recognized a harmony between the Old and New Testaments.
This understanding of the similitudes between the two testaments is called typology. The term “type” comes from the Greek word tupos, which means a blow or the mark or impression made by a blow. For example, a seal or signet ring leaves a “type” when pressed into soft wax. In theological language, a type is an image or imprint that points toward a greater reality—the true “prototype.” A type is also known as a “figure” or “prefigurement,” because it foreshadows or represents beforehand a future truth or reality.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, “‘figures’ (types) … announce [Christ] in the deeds, words, and symbols of the first covenant. By this re-reading in the Spirit of Truth, starting from Christ, the figures are unveiled” (1094). For example, the flood and Noah’s ark, along with the crossing of the Red Sea, prefigured salvation by baptism. In the manna we recognize symbols of the Eucharist: God is with us, and he provides us with nourishment for our earthly journey—nourishment we can depend on each and every day.
Manna, mysterious bread from above, was also a symbol for God’s word, supernatural food that gives life to the soul. As Moses exhorted the Israelites, “Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna … in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:2-3). Jesus, the Word-made-flesh, is the bread of God’s word and the bread of the Eucharist: “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). For forty years, God fed his people in the desert. Through the paschal mystery, he now feeds us with himself. At each celebration of the Mass, we are richly fed, for “the Eucharistic table set for us is the table both of the Word of God and of the Body of the Lord” (CCC, 1346).