You are what you eat

Homily – Monday 3rd Week of Easter May 9, 2011 – You are what you eat.

1st Reading Acts 6: 8-15 – Stephen filled with grace & power

Gospel Reading John 6:22-29 – Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life

In an article entitled, “You are what you Eat”, Yakov Levinson wrote,

“Our eating style reflects and affects who and what we are.  It identifies our approach to life.  If we examine various societies and cultures, we see that each has its traditional foods and food ceremonies.  One will say "I am Italian. I often eat spaghetti, lasagna, or pizza," or another,  "I am a real American.  I eat hamburgers, hot dogs, steak, coke, and french fries." The French eat crepes, Belgians eat waffles, Chinese eat rice, Ethiopians eat teff, the Swiss eat chocolate, Israelis eat felafel, and Eskimos eat whale blubber. In short, the "way we eat" reveals how we identify ourselves. It reflects and often determines our world-view, our values, and our entire approach to life.”

               
The passage we heard today from John’s Gospel is the introduction to what is known as the bread of life discourse.  It is the day after Jesus  performed the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000.   That night his apostles got into a boat to cross over the lake to the other side.   It was that same night that a storm had blown up and Jesus walked on the water and calmed the storm and the fears of his disciples.   The people did not see Jesus go with them and assumed he was still close by.    The next day when they couldn’t find him, they get in boats and cross over and they find him teaching in the synagogue.  When the finally catch up with Him, the ask Him, when did you get hear?  And as we hear, Jesus questions their true motives in looking for Him.  He tells them that they are more interested in have their bellies full than carefully listening to what He has been teaching them.  He is offering them food that will last forever and allow them to live forever if they but believe in Him.   The food that they truly need, the food that will define who they are is His very body and blood.   He is challenging them and us to look beyond our basic physical need for food and instead go deeper to the spiritual food that we must have if we want to live forever.  That spiritual food requires that we believe in Him and the one who sent Him. 

            
The saying, “you are what you eat” was never more true than when it is applied to the Eucharist.    For it is when we truly believe that what we are receiving, what we are eating, is truly the body and blood of Christ that we are Christ like, that we are Christian.  We become like the one we consume.  But it requires that we go deeper than the need to satisfy a basic human need for physical nourishment.  It requires that we recognize that our souls, the very life of God within us is sustained, replenished, and nourished by God Himself.    These are difficult things to understand, but Jesus requires that we only have to believe, we don’t have to understand it.

               
I had the privilege of preaching at the 1^st Communion for my grandson this weekend.  And when I say that the Gospel for the Mass was the bread of life discourse from John, I nearly freaked out.    How do you talk to 7 year olds about what Jesus meant when he said, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, you will not have life within you?  But in praying about it, I boiled it down to two words for them, “mystery” and “miracle”.   We can’t understand it.  That is the mystery.  And since only God can perform miracles, it becomes a simple matter of faith, that is do we believe that Jesus is God or not?   If we believe He is God, then we can accept what He says we must do to have eternal life.   He wants us to become what we eat.

               
This Eucharistic mindset is also critical to Evangelization.  For if all we do is feed those that are hungry, which anyone can do, and we do nothing else, they will be hungry again.   But if in feeding their bodies, we also feed their spirit with the realization that God so loved them that He gave His only Son for them, then we are giving them food which lasts forever.   But the degree to which we will be effective in feeding the spirit of those that come into our midst will be based on what we believe and how we are living out that belief.

           
In the today’s Gospel, the people ask Jesus, “what can we do to accomplish the works of God?  Jesus tells them, “ this is the work of God, that you believe in the one He sent.   Each time we approach the altar to receive the Eucharist, it is an opportunity to reaffirm what we believe.  And if we truly believe and carry that belief out into the world, then people can say of us, “you are what you eat.”