We Become What We Eat

My Dear Parishioners,

It was a blessing to have Fr. Gerald with us last week. He is a good priest, and he does great work in the mission territory of Ghana. May God’s Holy Angels and Saints grant him safe passage as he returns to his home and his missionary work, and may those same Holy Angels and Saints help him to bring many to Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist.

As he said last week, we become what we eat. If we eat healthy foods, we are generally a healthier person. If we eat unhealthy foods, we are generally an unhealthy person.

This is an important point as we continue our journey through Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John and Jesus’s teaching on the Most Holy Eucharist.

Since we become what we eat, He gave us this food from Heaven so that we can become Him. Not just be like Him, but so that we can truly become Him: Whoever eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood remains in Me and I in him. Just as the Father sent Me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on Me will have life because of Me.

• We become a people that has a special relationship with God the Father: On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you (John 14:20).
• We become a people who know the Father, because Jesus knows the Father: All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. (Matt: 11: 27)
• We become a people that has a special relationship with the Holy Spirit: Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? (I Cor 6:19)
• We become a people of love, since God is Love: Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. (I John 4: 7)
• We become a people who are Jesus’s hands and feet and ears and mouth bearing fruit that will last: I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. (John 15: 15-16).
• We become a people who already share in the Glories of Heaven: For the Spirit himself giveth testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God. And if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God and joint heirs with Christ: yet so, if we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him. (Romans 8: 15-17).
• We become children under the mantle of the Blessed Mother: And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed (Luke 1: 46-49).
• We become children cared for by Joseph: Remember, O most chaste spouse of the Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who implored your help and sought your intercession was left unassisted. Full of confidence in your power I fly unto you and beg your protection. Despise not O Guardian of the Redeemer my humble supplication, but in your bounty, hear and answer me. Amen (Memorare to St. Joseph).
• We become saints who will reign with Jesus in the Glorious World to Come. 

  Jesus is so good and so loving. He gave us the Most Holy Eucharist so that we could share both in His Passion and Death and the Merits of His Passion and Death.

  We rejoice in the fact, the fact, that whoever eats this bread will live forever.

  Let us rejoice in prayer and thanksgiving with the Litany of the Most Blessed Sacrament that I am including this week.

  St. Joseph, Patron of the Church and our Patron, pray for us!

  Fr. Michael J Pawelko, Pastor