The child who received bread from the Christ Child

The child who received bread from the Christ Child

The child was left at the Monastery of Eriti, near the city of Hermopolis, in the region of the Thebaid – a community of a hundred Monks, “all of one Soul, keeping the common life ordered with much love.” There the wonder took place that seals his childhood and that, for the reader attentive to the Theology of the Liturgy, already says everything.

The boy, having reached the age of seven, would ask for a small piece of bread at the refectory and go with it into the Narthex of the Church, where an Icon of the Mother of God was, holding upon her arms our Lord Jesus Christ. And he would speak with the Christ-Child of the Icon “as with one living,” with the innocence of a “Holy ignorance”: “You too are small, just as I am, but I go to the refectory, ask the cook for bread and eat, while You never eat. Why do You suffer so, eating nothing? Here, take my portion and eat.” And the Christ-Child depicted on the Icon, “as though He were living, stretched out His little hand and took the bread from the hands of Onuphrios.”

The cook followed him and saw what was happening, he then told the Abbot. The Elder instructed the cook to no longer give the child bread, but to say to him: “Go and ask for bread from the One to Whom you have given it so often.” The boy went weeping to the Icon: “The cook will not give me bread from himself, and I am hungry; give me from Yourself, for I too have given to You so often!” And at once the Christ-Child stretched out his hand and gave him “a great loaf, beautiful, pure, white as snow, and warm,” so large that a child of seven could scarcely carry it. Little Onuphrios showed it to the Abbot who called together all the Monks, telling them of what happened, and distributed the bread among themselves “for the Blessing and Sanctification of all.”

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