Christ Church Assistant Director of Music and Organist Jerrick Cavagnaro presented this meaningful devotion at a recent staff meeting.

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Growing up Roman Catholic, I am very familiar with the song “I am the bread of life” by Sister Suzanne Toolan. The opening stanza goes, “I am the bread of life. You who come to me shall not hunger; and who believe in me shall not thirst.”

As I was practicing last week, this hymn crossed my mind and reminded me of the line from the Lord’s prayer, “give us this day our daily bread.” This then reminded me of a special bread in my life: sourdough bread.

I grew up not liking sourdough very much. It had a strange flavor, a hard crust, and was very unlike the white sandwich bread I ate everyday with liverwurst and cheese at lunch (yes, I was a quirky kid!). However, I eventually grew to love a crusty, rustic loaf of sourdough bread (or really any bread fitting this description). I like sourdough bread so much, in fact, that almost every weekend I bake a loaf or two which lasts me the next week, and often I give out an extra loaf to a friend or neighbor.

I am reminded of the reason I started making sourdough bread in the first place: the Coronavirus pandemic. I recall the loneliness and isolation I felt after having moved to Charlotte in 2020, not knowing anyone in this city, no family with me, and having to work from home, isolate, and quarantine. Put quite frankly, it was a miserable time for me, as I know it was for countless others. Unable to play the organ in worship, to accompany hymns, to direct the choir, etcetera, I was convinced that my “daily bread” – that which is supposed to feed you spiritually, provide nourishment and meaning – was taken from me. Stolen, by an invisible virus.

I am so grateful that we are able to meet face to face again and that I can practice my work in person rather than through a screen. But thinking back to the lockdown, I realize that although I thought my “daily bread” was taken from me, there were other little things that took its place: tiny things that helped remind me of God’s love and helped me through the loneliness and isolation. One of these, ironically, was the act of baking and sharing bread.

The act of baking bread became, for me, my own sort of life-giving daily bread. It fed me both spiritually and physically, it provided nourishment, satisfaction, and fulfillment. And although I still get hungry after eating a slice of this bread, I’m again reminded of the song “I am the bread of life.”

Finding the daily breads in our life, I think, helps lead us to the ultimate bread of life: God. And as the song says, those who come to God “shall not hunger” and those who believe in God “shall not thirst.” Though times can be terribly difficult, and it can seem like we have been stripped of the very thing that feeds and nourishes our souls, God is still there saying “I will raise you up on the last day.”

The next time you pray the Lord’s Prayer, I invite you to recall the daily breads in your life, whether they be family, your job, a hobby, or maybe even a slice of a rustic sourdough.