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Amici, Americani, Compatriotae,Three years ago today the Old Testament reading fir Daily Mass came from Amos chapter 8. Verses 11 and 12 are noteworthy:11 Ecce dies veniunt,dicit Dominus,et mittam famem in terram;non famem panis neque sitim aquae,sed audiendi verbum Domini.12 Et fugient a mari usque ad mare;et ab aquilone usque ad orientem circuibunt,quaerentes verbum Domini,et non invenient.11 Behold the days are coming,Says the Lord,And I shall send famine into the earth;Not a famine of bread nor a thirst of water,But of hearing the word of the Lord.12 And they everywhere shall flee from sea to sea;And they everywhere shall wander from north to east,Searching for the word of the Lord,And not finding [it].What if this passage of Sacred Scripture has a dual meaning: (1) the obvious meaning that the rebellious people of Israel, the northern kingdom, would no longer have the word of the Lord in the form of the written Torah or Mosaic Law, and (2) the subtle meaning that one day due to similar rebellion on the part of the Church, Christians would be deprived of the Holy Eucharist, the Bread of Life, the Word of God made Flesh?Again and again Sacred Scripture refers to Jesus as the Word of God made Flesh, and Jesus told His disciples that He would give us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink. What if in our rebellion in these post-modern, neo-pagan times we might find ourselves without a priest and thus without the Eucharist? When tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread after his sojourn in the wilderness, Jesus said in Matthew 4:4:Scriptum est:‘Non in pane solo vivet homo,sed in omni verbo, quod procedit de ore Dei.’It is written:‘Not in bread alone shall man live,But in every word which proceeds from the mouth of God.’And Jesus taught His disciples to pray thusly in Matthew 6:11:Panem nostrum supersubstantialem da nobis hodie.Give us today our supersubstantial bread.Maybe one day we will reap the consequences of our heresies and apostasies as the people of Israel and Judah did when they were deported into captivity by Assyria and Babylon respectively.