For For Catholic readers who want a devotional study of the Eucharist; readers outside that practice will find its assumptions Catholic throughout.
Should I read this?
For the general reader
3 of 5worth your time
For the researcher
2 of 5useful
Difficulty
2 of 5moderate
A Catholic meditation on the Eucharist as sacrament and sacrifice and on communion as union with Christ.
How it proceeds
Philosophic2 of 5
Scriptural3 of 5
Experiential4 of 5
Sociological2 of 5
Historical1 of 5
Independent intensities, 0–5 — what the work is made of, not how good it is.
Published by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy in New York in 1956 (157 pages), The Living Bread is Merton's book on the Eucharist, described in its library record as a Catholic interpretation of the sacrament. It treats the Eucharist as memorial and sacrifice, as communion with Christ and as the bond of the Church, in the meditative prose of his books of the 1950s. It was reissued in paperback by Dell in 1959.
