Turning Your World Upside Down

The Feast of the Body & Blood of Christ
Today’s Readings: [Click here]

I’m very excited because one of my favorite cooking reality shows just began a new season: Hell’s Kitchen. If you’ve seen it, you know how the head chef, Gordon Ramsay, gives the contestants a baptism by fire week after week. As dreadful as he makes things for the chefs, by the time the winner has survived the ordeal, he or she actually has become quite accomplished and is ready to take on the culinary world and running their own restaurant.

Many top chefs dream of making it big with their own restaurant… and sometimes they’re even willing to think way outside the box and attempt something quite novel.

That was exactly the case a few years ago when a small group of restaurateurs decided to experiment with a new restaurant idea in Paris. It turned out to be so successful, that they’ve now opened a second place in London. They named their restaurant “Dans le Noir,” which means “In the Dark.” Their concept was this: when you arrive, you are led into the dining room—which is absolutely pitch black. All the waiters are blind or visually impaired, so while the patrons are having a most unusual sensory experience eating food they can’t see and groping around gingerly for cutlery and glasses and the butter dish, the staff is doing great, because they have the confidence and expertise that sighted people lack. Truly, it is a world turned upside down.

In many ways, this is like the kingdom of God. The strong are made weak, and the vulnerable are made strong. The values that dominate our usual world—success, wealth, power, health, celebrity—count for nothing there. But for those who surrender their lives to the Lord, the experiences and rewards will be breathtaking.

Today we are privileged to celebrate the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ… the feast of the Holy Eucharist. Incredibly—or perhaps not so incredibly if we really knew the mind and heart of the Lord!—Christ gives us himself as our food, as spiritual food. And the more worthily and the more often we eat his flesh and drink his blood, the more we shall become like him… the more we shall live in a world turned upside down: the world of the kingdom of God.

When I was a kid, I used to love to watch Popeye cartoons on TV. It inspired me how Popeye could always get out of any kind of bind by gobbling down a can of spinach. That food had supernatural power!

I also was fascinated when I read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. If you drank the liquid in a bottle marked “Drink Me,” you would shrink. If you ate the cake marked “Eat Me,” you’d grow very large. Wouldn’t that be handy sometimes—to get into a rabbit hole like Alice, or to be tall enough to go on one of the cool rides at the fair…? Again, the power of food and drink!

Literature is abounding with examples of magical powers found in things we can eat or drink: Willy Wonka had wallpaper you could lick and truly taste the foods pictured… Harry Potter and his friends had their Bertie Botts Beans that came in every flavor imaginable… and Malvina Reynolds wrote a wonderful song called “Magical Food” that promised things like: “Take a bite of carrot / You’ll become a parrot” …

Alas, that’s all fiction. All the soggy canned spinach in the world isn’t going to give you super powers.

But amazingly, the promise of food and drink that turns you into God is absolutely real! That’s why it is not an exaggeration to say that the Eucharist is the greatest gift that Christ left his Church. That’s why we celebrate today’s feast day.

As Catholics, we believe that when the priest at mass says the words of consecration over ordinary bread and wine, these elements completely change into Jesus’ flesh and blood. The bread and wine are no more.

How is such a thing possible? Clearly it takes the power of God to make such a change. To make his body and blood as widely available as possible, Christ gave this special power to his priests through the sacrament of Holy Orders. Interestingly, the real miracle of the Eucharist is not that bread and wine can be transformed into flesh and blood, because we know that God can do anything… the real miracle is that following the change, the elements still look like bread and wine!

As faithful believers, there are many important and wonderful reasons for us to receive the Eucharist—communion—as often as we can. But the main reason is because it changes us, too.

When we take ordinary food and drink, these things nourish our bodies and help us be strong and healthy. But regular food doesn’t have an impact on our spiritual side, our soul.

The Eucharist, however, does. It is our food for the soul. It strengthens us to love more… to live more in the service of God and neighbor. Through the Eucharist, we are gradually transformed into saints. No matter what mission God may set forth before us, no matter what difficulties we may face or what courage we may require in life, the Eucharist will fortify us. Through the Eucharist, we will learn to love the unlovable, lift up the downcast, build up the weak, and give thanks to God always and everywhere for all his gifts. As the old saying goes, “You are what you eat.” So if you eat Christ, it’s not a surprise that you will become Christ.

Yes, indeed, the body and blood of Christ are destined to turn your world upside down. Come, seek and receive these precious gifts with joy and trembling.