We become what we eat!

Dieticians have started to notice that what we eat can change the way we think and the way we feel about life. This is not just about watching our weight but rather how we are called to live in this world. People are starting to ask important questions about what will actually nourish and sustain us. There is also a need to discover who provides the food that we consume to ensure that they are given just recompense for their labour. We start to discover that how we eat is not just about what we enjoy but how we are called to create communities which are sustainable and life-giving.

As we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ, we see that at the centre of our Christian life stands a person who wishes to sustain us in our faith. His presence makes all the difference not just when we celebrate Mass but in how we are called to listen to the Word and be sent out into our daily lives with a spirit of thanksgiving. The Eucharistic celebration is never just about feeding myself but rather an engagement with the graced presence of God who seeks to draw us into a life which is more than a distant memory. It calls us to be present to the presence and to be transformed more and more into His Body and His blood which sustains the Church. 

In an age where people seek to exercise an increasing level of choice about what they eat, where they eat and when they eat we need to acknowledge that it is the Mass which can draw people together from a variety of backgrounds into the living body of Christ. Our obligation to attend Mass especially on Sunday is not a dry fact but rather a discovery that without this anchoring in our life we start to build our faith on our own opinion rather than on His Life. The Eucharist does change us, restore us and heal us from indifference to God and to each other. It calls us to see God at the centre of our lives. By being aware of this we see the world differently as a place where we live in relationship with the whole of creation and as stewards of the land in which we live. We see the connections between how we live and what we consume. We become what we eat!