Who here has heard the phrase, ‘You are what you eat?’ What does that mean? If you wanted to be a runner in the Olympics or if you wanted to walk to the top of Mount Everest, you would need to have a diet that gave you the strength to do either of these things.
If you want to be a follower of Jesus, what should you eat? Let’s think about food in a different way—what special meals can you think of that people have? What do most people have for Christmas dinner? How would people in your family react if someone decided to make lasagne for Christmas instead? Or if at a birthday, there was no cake? Special meals help us to remember and to make more real our memories of celebrations gone by. When people join in the Eucharist, they are remembering, not just in their memories, Jesus’ life and mission. At Mass, the bread and wine become Jesus’ body and blood, giving those who eat it the nutrition they need to live their lives as they should.
Jesus tells us that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will live in him, and he will live in them. The first people who heard this certainly thought it was a strange thing to say! However, when we gather as a church or school family to receive the Body of Christ, we show that we are united as the Body of Christ. When we share with our neighbour, we become sisters and brothers in Jesus and bring his life and love into the world. This is central to our faith and why we celebrate this with our Corpus Christi Procession this Friday.
