Eating Foreshadows the Resurrection
We are what we eat.
Eating junk makes one feel sluggish and gain weight; eating healthy and right makes one feels refreshed and energized; and if one doesn’t eat at all, they starve. In short, it’s imperative to be conscious of what we consume. The same is true spiritually. Forgo prayer — or dismiss a relationship with God — the spirit will be malnourished, withering away into nothingness. Conversely, partaking in the sacraments and committing to prayer is a spiritually enriching diet.
In God’s providence, Jesus Christ marries the basic human survival instinct with the divine. More so, he recognized that meals are communitive. When he broke bread with his disciples at the Last Supper, he forged a new covenant between God and man. Today, colloquially, ‘breaking bread’ signifies setting aside differences and coming together.
Both are true in the Eucharist, the “source and summit of the Christian life” (Catechism 1324). As the “bread of life,” people from all nations with varying languages gather in holy communion at Mass, uniting in worship, for a meal — with Christ, himself, at the center. Indeed, Christ stresses that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” (John Ch. 6:53)
This revelation, of Christ offering himself in the Eucharist, was foreshadowed in the feeding of the five thousand with only a few loaves and fish.
However, the Eucharist — that the bread and wine are transubstantiated into Christ’s body, blood, soul and divinity — is a main source of contention among Christian denominations. Even one-third of U.S. Catholics believe in the Real Presence, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center report. More recently, a poll conducted by Vinea Research — a Maryland firm “committed to helping the Church better understand those it serves” — found 69% of weekly Mass attendees accept this crucial tenet of Catholicism.
Any shortcoming is problematic to evangelizing and catechizing the next generation, hence the “National Eucharistic Revival”: a grassroots movement to re-catechize U.S. Catholics, that will culminate at the 10th National Eucharistic Congress — the first in more than 80 years — at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Ind., from July 17-21.
As thousands join for Eucharistic celebrations and that holy meal, what should not be lost is how eating demonstrates our vitality and even resurrection.
In Mark’s Gospel, Jairus — a synagogue official — pleads with Christ to “lay your hands on her that she may get well and live,” as she is “at the point of death.” Moved with compassion, Jesus accompanies him; but, when he arrives, the girl is dead as the house was a “sight of a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.” Jesus, however, tells them the girl is only asleep, yet they “ridiculed him.” They were cynical, genuinely believing Jairus’ daughter had passed away. She could not be helped.
But no slumber is too great for Christ to overcome. He told the girl to “arise,” which she promptly obliged and “walked around.” In the episode’s closing, Jesus gives the witnesses two orders: to not tell anyone and to give the girl “something to eat.” The latter order makes sense: Jairus’ daughter needs food to re-energize and recover from the trying ordeal.
Yet, like most of his acts, things are not as simple as they seem, especially eating. In fact, after telling Lazarus to “come out” though dead for four days, the man — in the next chapter — was “one of those reclining at table with [Jesus]” at dinner. For Jairus’s daughter and Lazarus, eating was definitive proof that both were, indeed, rejuvenated and restored to life.
Christ takes this a step further after his resurrection. While the Apostles hid from persecution after their rabbi’s horrid death, Jesus stood in their midst. They believed him to be a “ghost,” according to Luke’s Gospel. However, Jesus assured them that he was physically present by showing them his wounds. While his followers marveled at the miraculous event, Christ, seemingly out of nowhere, asks, “Have you anything here to eat?” They had a piece of baked fish and he “took it and ate it in front of them.”
In John’s Gospel, Jesus even cooked breakfast for his disciples.
Why was the mere act of eating important? For Christ, it affirmed his resurrection. He needed sustenance because he was — and still is — alive, for a dead body cannot consume, but is rather consumed by the earth (unless incorrupted like several saints, whose bodies have avoided decay).
Eating and drinking, therefore, are signs of vitality. Like all things, Christ elevates this basic human need and foreshadows that when our own bodies are resurrected — as professed in the Apostles’ Creed — we will eat anew. We will not be mere ghosts floating endlessly, but flesh and blood in the new Heaven and Earth.
So, let’s change our diets: adore the Eucharist; join in the holy communion; participate in the revival of body and spirit. After all, we become what we eat.