There is a funny radio commercial for Netflix. I wonder if you've heard it. The announcer of an apparent gameshow asks the contestant, "If you are what you eat, what am I?" The man replies, "Pasta puttanesca." The answer sounds funny enough to make you laugh, even if you don't know the original meaning of puttanesca, which I can't tell you here. Google it. Let's just say it's pasta covered in a spicy tomato sauce of olives, capers, artichoke hearts and anchovies; and it's origin is even spicier.
Today's feast of Corpus Christi, or the Body and Blood of Christ gives us an opportunity to not only think about our understanding of the Eucharist, but our relationship to food in general.
Did you ever wonder why the Church requires us to fast from eating an hour before receiving holy communion? Of course, back when I was in high school, the rule was no food after midnight before receiving communion. Maybe the church fathers shortened the time because all the noise from the gurgling stomachs was drowning out the choir. The problem was, if you went to a later Mass, you thought even less about the meaning of the Eucharist then you did about food and wishing the priest would hurry up and finish so you could go eat breakfast.
Breakfast. Break fast.
I don't think the rule about fasting before receiving communion is just about respect for the presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, but also it is about getting our attention to focus on just what it is we are actually eating, what happens to it after we digest it, and then what happens to us.
You are what you eat. If you eat healthy food, you will be healthy. If you eat junk food...? But I don't think if you eat fast food, you'll become fast. However, if we eat the Body of Christ, it becomes us. Or rather, we become it. That's why we call it communion.
As the song says, "This bread that we share is the Body of Christ, this cup of Blessing, his blood. We who come to this table bring all our wounds to be healed.
When we love one another as Christ has loved us, we become God's daughters and sons. We become for each other the bread, the cup, the presence of Christ revealed."
Too often well-meaning Catholics think communion is just about them and Jesus, that their duty as a Christians ends with them presenting themselves free from sin before the priest so they can then receive communion and go back to their pews, go back to their homes and go back to their lives...undisturbed and unchanged
Communion is both the end and beginning of our life of faith. It's not just a reward for being good, it also gives us the spiritual power we need to be better so we can go out into the world and make it a better place by giving witness to the gospel of Christ with our lives.
The Eucharist binds us to Christ but it also binds us to one another. If I eat the Body of Christ and you eat the Body of Christ, Christ dwells in us and we in him, then you and I are more than brothers and sisters in Christ. We are one in Christ.
If we bow before the Blessed Sacrament, ought we not also bow reverently to one another? If we refuse to recognize the presence of Christ in one another, we insult Our Lord as much as the person who takes the host and throws it on the ground and steps on it.
Our Lord could have taken a flower or a rock and said, "From now on, this is my body and when you see this flower or rock, think of me."
But he didn't. He chose bread, food to be broken, shared and eaten as his everlasting memorial.
The people of the world hunger for the bread of life and too often we fill them with cream puffs and doughnuts. Junk theology is just as harmful as junk food.
Yes, the church desperately needs priests to give believers the bread of life.
But the world even more desperately needs Christians, like you, to put into practice the gospel of our Lord.
We are not rocks, hard and unbreakable; we are not flowers, to look pretty for a day and then fade away. We are the Body of Christ, to give ourselves for the life of the world.
