Sister Maria Catherine Toon

In a deep, crackling voiceover, Bryan Cranston recites Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias” for a trailer of one of the last episodes of “Breaking Bad.” The startling words of the poem are set against the backdrop of time-lapsed images of busy cities, the movement of the sun, and the timelessness of the desert. The poem describes a traveler coming upon the ruins of an ancient king who believed that his fame and reputation would live forever through the stone monuments he had built for himself. But instead the traveler sees only rubble and the sands of the desert.

This passage in the letter to the Hebrews reminds us that eternal priesthood comes from God.

When the Apostle John was organizing his Gospel, he writes that he will not be telling us everything that Christ did, but rather “these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30).

Have you ever woken up famished from a good, hard sleep? On at least one other occasion when Jesus raised someone from the dead, Christ asks that she be given something to eat (Mark 5:43), and so he, himself, eats here. What a human thing to do, to attend to the needs of the body! Jesus’ actions point towards a truth that not only proves that he is divine (he does not need doors to enter a room) but that he is also human, with a body and soul that needs nourishment. When some argue that Jesus was just a really good person, or an exceptional teacher, or prophet, this passage is one of the places that illuminates the truth of his two-fold nature.