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What are You Eating?
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Last weekend, the universal church celebrated the Solemnity of Corpus Christi - The body and blood of Christ. This celebration marked the beginning of the parish phase of the three-year National Eucharistic Revival called for by the bishops of the United States. The bishops articulate the purpose of the Year of Parish Revival in this manner: to discern how we might “heal, form, convert, unify, and send” our parishioners through a “rekindled relationship with Jesus in the Eucharist.”
My focus this year would be to deepen Eucharistic understanding and devotion within our parish, so that we can all become Eucharistic missionaries, bringing others to Jesus, truly present in the most holy sacrament of the altar. In this Year of the Parish Revival, I intend to do some catechesis on the Eucharist, calling us to embrace the beauty of this gift which Christ has left us as a memorial of his Passion, Death and Resurrection. Jesus does not want to leave us without the assurance of his presence, hence he left the church this august mystery of his body and blood. I plan on using the categories of Food, Sacrifice and Communion in explaining this sacrament. Then I will explore how this mystery invites us to Remember, Participate and Live it out in the world.
We all agree that food is essential to life, and eating the right kinds of food, in the right proportions, is essential to living a healthy and long life. This explains why parents encourage, and sometimes insist that their children eat the right food (fruits, vegetables, and so on). Many of us adults pay so much to stay in good health and shape, but if we only realized that eating healthy is a non-negotiable piece in this quest, we would do well. While humans do not exist to eat, we cannot exist however without eating, except in very unique and miraculous situations where the saints lived without food but only on the Eucharist for some length of time (for example, Saints Catherine of Siena, and Joseph of Cupertino). The Eucharist is food for our pilgrimage journey while on earth. This journey is a long and arduous one. And one cannot go through it without nourishment and hydration. This is why the Lord gives us his flesh and blood as real food and real drink to support us on this pilgrimage until we reach our heavenly homeland. Our Lord Jesus Christ was intentional in instituting the Eucharist within the context of a meal just before he went to his passion. His action is very symbolic. It commemorates the ancient Passover meal when God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, but also shows it to be a foreshadowing of the new meal which Christ offers through his passion, the gift of himself as food. Throughout his earthly ministry, Jesus fed the hungry by multiplying bread, but all of these instances of the miraculous multiplication of loaves was leading to the ultimate gift of himself as the true food.
Jesus knew the necessity of eating the right food. Our first parents fell from grace, in the garden, when they stretched their hands and took the fruit of the tree which God had forbidden them to eat. By this singular action they not only disobeyed God, they also ate wrongly. They then passed on this inability to choose and eat rightly to their children and generations after them. Sin is choosing wrongly. It is preferring the creature over the Creator. And this inability to choose correctly without divine assistance, called grace, has been the bane of humanity since the fall of our ancestors. In the Eucharist, however, the Lord gives us the right food, and invites us to eat and drink. Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” My question to you this week is, “What are you eating?”
May Jesus bless you, and may our Lady protect you!