True Food

Reflection for June 7, 2026 – The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ

In today’s readings, Jesus teaches a crowd of his Jewish followers about how he is the bread of life. He explains that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will live forever. Find Today’s Reading Here

Like most millennial women, I have a bizarre relationship with food.

I’m so busy and distracted that most days, I forget to eat — until nighttime, when I make some very questionable decisions, usually involving cake. I also came of age in a time when any woman without a visible eating disorder was labeled as “curvy” (and curvy was understood by everyone to be A Very Bad Thing). Thus, I have a deep feeling of shame whenever I do eat, even when I am hungry, and even when it’s something good for me.



I’m so messed up when it comes to food that I often wonder if I even have a good point of reference for understanding the Eucharist. What is “true food” and “true drink,” when you live in a society where bodily nourishment is so plentiful — at least for certain fortunate people like me — that we reject it out of pride, that we feel a shame for needing it, and that we use it as a balm for feelings of boredom, pain, and fear?

But I suppose there’s no better way to understand the Eucharist, when you really think about it. The Israelites survived on manna from Heaven — what they would have given for a grocery store. What they would have given for redemption.

I am given both. I appreciate neither to the extent that I should.

True food, true nourishment, true life — physical and spiritual — these are things we all desperately want. And so many of us have them. But our ability to understand what they mean — well, it’s hampered. This isn’t Eden, after all.

We are reading a book missing half its pages, singing a harmony missing half its parts. We stumble forward, knowing that the fullness can come, will come — one day.

If we keep trying.

©LPi