The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
For me, food can drastically impact my mood and my resilience. For instance, if I meal prep over the weekend, I feel strengthened and energized by my healthy food throughout the week. If not, I tend to choose less healthy and more expensive options that leave me feeling sluggish and lazy. In the moment, I rarely realize that my bad mood was caused by my food choices!
For Elijah in today’s first reading, he despaired and even prayed for death after encountering difficulty on his journey. But the Lord knew that Elijah just needed rest, food, and water so He provided Elijah with exactly what he needed to continue on to the mountain of God.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus makes one of the most radical and divisive yet miraculous and joyous proclamations of his ministry: that he will be providing his own flesh and blood to us to eat. He knows that just as our bodies need food upon which to feed, our souls require nourishment from the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ himself. The Eucharist is our miraculous and inexhaustible source of grace and spiritual goodness that can truly change our lives if we let it.
The True Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC 1324). It is the source of our ability to strive for virtue, overcome temptation, and give the gift of ourselves to the world. At work, with our friends, in our romantic relationships, and even within ourselves, the Eucharist is the supernatural food that gives us the graces to be imitators of God as Paul urged the Ephesians in the second reading.
Life is hard. The life of a Christian is even harder. But Christ has given us the Eucharist. How inconceivably lucky we are that the creator of the universe willingly makes Himself present to us under the mystical veil of bread and wine that we may eat it and live forever. Receiving this infinite fount of grace as often as possible gives us what we need to become the saints God has called us to be.
Believe, receive, and be strengthened for the journey.
Tomás Aguilar is a Marine Corps Officer from Pennsylvania living just north of Jacksonville, Florida. When not in uniform you can find him hiking, biking, building, singing or cooking! Check out his Instagram to see his world travels, his love of Catholic Meme dealing, and his attempts to find and imitate the face of Christ in everyday life.