The Broken Bread and the Broken Heart

“And He took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is My body which is given for you” (Luke 22:19). Fall Communion Season 2025

The Broken Bread and the Broken Heart

“And He took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is My body which is given for you” (Luke 22:19).

The breaking came before the giving. It always does. The bread was whole in His hands, then broken, then blessed, then given. So too, the heart that He calls His own. Jesus will never turn from the broken. He enters by brokenness. He gives thanks for what the world pities, and turns it into a vessel of beauty. The proud heart stays sealed and starved, but the contrite receive grace as daily bread.

At the Supper, the believer brings his own fractures. While others come to perform, the worthy communicant comes to remember. In his trembling hands is placed the proof of all that love has cost. The cup and the bread are the grammar of Calvary’s mercy, teaching us again what sin required and what Christ fulfilled.

“This is My body.” Every sin of the redeemed is pressed into that loaf, every obedience of Christ kneaded into His substance. When the bread is torn, the soul says “I am crucified with Christ”, the crust of pride giving way, the hardness of heart softening under the warmth of free, unmerited grace.

Breaking usually ends something. Here, His breaking brings newness of life. When the Lord wounds, He opens the way for His own healing. What He breaks, He blesses; what He breaks, He uses. And the more He is received, the more the heart learns what true wholeness is.

We come to the Table because He calls. And He calls those who need Him most. The unworthy find welcome, the weary find rest, the broken find bread. “He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.” Luke 1:53

O Christ,

Thou who wast broken to make us whole,

take up the fragments of this life,

and use them for Thy praise.