In many ways we are what we eat. If we eat only junk food, we gradually become junk people. If we eat rich and opulent food, it creates snobbish and pretentious desires in us and, if we can afford it, we try to live rich and luxurious lives. Diet becomes a way of life. But if we eat simple, homemade food, lovingly prepared by our wives or mothers, it helps us to become homebodies. The love with which the food was prepared somehow enters into us. Food is not just fuel, it becomes an attitude towards life. The love and creativity that goes into that food helps shape us.
This is relevant to today's feast, because it is about salvation through food. On this day, Our Lord Jesus Christ instituted the Eucharist, giving us his body and blood in the form of bread and wine, and making sacramentally present his sacrifice on the Cross and his conquest of death through the Resurrection.
Let us remember that the condemnation of humanity began through food, when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit. We were condemned through food, but then Christ saved us by giving us new food, his own self in the Eucharist. We lost our dignity by eating badly and now we are raised to greater dignity by eating well. The Eucharist is about eating well, about literally becoming the food we eat.
I began by saying, "In many ways we are what we eat." And that comes true in the Mass. Because what we eat is literally the body and blood of Jesus, Jesus himself. When we take communion, we eat Jesus. The bread we eat and the wine we sometimes drink are no longer, in fact, bread and wine. They have the appearance, the taste, of bread and wine, what we call the accidents, but they are now Jesus himself, true God and true man. We eat Jesus himself. With ordinary food, the food we receive becomes us; but with the Eucharist, we become the food we receive. By receiving Jesus in Communion, we become more like him, we are gradually transformed into him. And by becoming more like him, we become more like ourselves. Jesus instituted the Eucharist during a Passover meal, reliving Israel's liberation from Egyptian slavery. It might also help us to consider that, through the sacraments, God frees us. We are freed from sin to discover our true identity as children of God.
