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Presentation
The Editors

"Our Daily Bread"! Here is a subject as old as time and as new and as urgent as "this day"! How can, we cope with the biggest problem of our modern world: that of feeding entire populations which, in Africa and elsewhere are dying of hunger? How can we arrange a more just distribution of the riches of our planet? ,
The expression which has entered the Lord's Prayer as our daily bread has, in fact, never been translated satisfactorily. The Greek word epiousios which is rendered in latin as quotidianum or, in Jerome's Vulgate, supersubstantialem; has been variously understood as «
- necessary», «: sufficient»„ «of this day" or, according to a Hebrew text to which Jerome alludes, "of (or for) the morrow", "until tomorrow". The R.S.V. Bible, which the SIDIC review uses at its standard text unless otherwise stated, suggests as an alternative both to Matthew's and Luke's "our daily bread", our bread for the morrow. Alberto Mello, (cf. Vita Monastica, Camaldoli No. 158) considers that the biblical account of the giving of the manna in Ex 16 : 4 - gather a day's portion every day - contains the same type of repetition as give us this day our daily bread, pointing to a similar faith expérience whereby we trust God for the morrow.
Every day Jews and Christians pray to the Father who brings bread out of the earth (Birkat ha-Mazon) or who gives our daily bread (the Lord's Prayer) because, for the person who lives by faith, the world with all its richness belongs to the Creator who bestows it upon his creatures for their use.
The various articles presented here bring out this attitude of faith and of freedom found in the berakhah whereby we recognize in God alone the lawful owner of the bread necessary for our very life. They demonstrate also that the fact that we receive from the hand of God not only bread out o f the earth but also the divine word and, for Christians, the Eucharist. This impels us to live on the earth and with the earth in a spirit of poverty and sharing.