This happened to me recently. I’m in the cafeteria line putting food on my plate. I pick up a bag of Cheetos and the person behind me says, “You know those aren’t good for you.” Of course I know they’re not good for me. I know they are junk food. But I like junk food, especially the kind that gets your fingers all orange and gooky. So now I’ll be feeling guilty eating those Cheetos … but I don’t feel guilty enough to put them back! All of which serves as a reminder that food is more than fuel for the machine. It carries feelings and meaning with it. For example, we call certain things “comfort foods” that feed not only your body but bring you back to the times when mashed potatoes was all you needed for the world to be okay. When we are sick we eat chicken soup because momma said it would make us feel better. I was with a group in the Holy Land and their happiest moment was when we came across a KFC – a little reminder of home. At Thanksgiving you’d better have turkey and all the trimmings. At the food pantry the clients often gush with gratitude as they are taking groceries home. And if a guy wants to impress his date, he takes her to a fancy restaurant. So food carries many different meanings – contentment, comfort, culture, survival, guilt. It’s complicated.
Jesus chose food as the way he would remain with his disciples. I am the bread of life, said the Lord. By eating and drinking we melt the years that separate us from the time he walked the dusty roads of Galilee. We are nourished by that sacred meal that puts us at the table with all of the tax collectors and sinners who were invited to dine with him. By sharing in this meal we are given the foretaste of the heavenly banquet. Like any kind of food when you eat it, it becomes part of you. You are what you eat as the saying goes. Jesus left us a meal so that we could understand how close God is to us, that God enters into our very being. I used to have a poster back in college that read: Jesus invites you to a banquet to be held in his honor.
Because food is complicated when we are dealing with heavenly food there is even more going on here than we know. Jesus said, “My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in them.” Long time Catholics have gotten so used to those words that their ability shock us has diminished. But shocking they were to his contemporaries and startling they should be for us. We are not dealing here merely with wheat and grapes but flesh and blood, the basic reality of a person. Jesus chose the most intimate, the most personal way of staying connected with us – food with all of its many layers of meaning. This saying of Jesus tells us that this bread from heaven is actually a person, that receiving communion is encountering the person of Jesus in an intimate way. Taking Holy Communion is letting Jesus into our very being. He said that because we partake in the eating of his body and drinking his blood we remain in him and he remains in us. We are being transformed from the inside out. As the great African bishop St. Augustine put it: God is nearer to us that we are to ourselves. It is not only the bread and wine that are transformed but we are as well. As St. Paul puts it, it is now no longer I that live but Christ lives in me.
We say, rightly, that receiving Holy Communion is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. “Whoever eats this bread will live forever,” the Lord told us. However, we don’t need to wait until the sweet bye-and-bye in order to experience that glimpse of glory. The very act of being people of the Eucharist gives us a present tense taste of the divine. The gospel says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.” Not will have, but has. We partake of eternal life in our current reality because we share life with Jesus. Every time we act as Jesus did we are living eternal life. Whenever we say a word of kindness, when we extend a hand of forgiveness, when our heart is full of generosity, when reach out to the needy, when we visit those who are sick, when we heal a broken relationship, when we endure our suffering bravely, whenever we respond to God’s will faithfully, then we are living as Jesus did, then we have eternal life.
Once upon a time an angel visited a man in Hong Kong. The angel told him, “You have been very good for many years so God would like to bless you. What would you ask of the Lord?” The Chinaman answered, “I am an old man and my needs are few. However, I would love to have a vision of heaven so I know what is in store for me.” The angel said, “Easily done. However, I will show you a vision of hell first so you can see the contrast.” So the man was transported and he saw a beautiful banquet hall. There was a long table decorated with white linen and candles in the center of that hall with people seated on both sides. On the table were piles of the most delicious foods imaginable. The aromas were enticing. The man was surprised. “I thought you said you were going to show me hell first. This place looks wonderful.” “Look more closely,” said the angel. Then the man from Hong Kong saw that each one of the diners seated at the table had ten foot long chop sticks strapped to his hands. Try as they would, not one of the diners managed to get the food off the table and into their mouths. “Ah so,” said the man, “that truly is hell.” Then the angel took him to see heaven. Much to his surprise it looked like the exact same scene – long decorated table, diners on both sides, piles of luscious food, and even the same ten foot long chop sticks lashed to the hands of the diners. “But this is just like hell,” said the man. “Look more closely,” said the angel. And then the Chinaman saw the difference. Instead of each diner trying to bring the food into his own mouth, they were picking up the food with their chop sticks and feeding the person on the other side of the table. “Ah so,” said the man. “That truly is a vision of heaven.”
