A teacher once asked his students to mention the necessities of life and they responded “food, shelter and clothing.” He asked them again, “of all these, which do you consider the most important?” They all said “food,” and the teacher asked them the reason for their answer. The first person said that it was because food gives one the strength to provide shelter for oneself. The second person said that food provides the energy to manufacture one’s clothing and other needs and a third person said that food is the basic ingredient to sustain life. I think the students were all correct in their answers. 

For this reason, the book of Proverbs (9:1-6) in the first reading invites us to “come and eat bread of my food and drink wine I have mixed!” This invitation is not to satisfy a physical need but to take care of a spiritual need. This invitation is an invitation to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass where we eat the body of Christ and the blood of Christ. 

Beloved friends, how do you respond to this divine invitation to come and eat the bread that came down from heaven? The body of Christ is real food for our souls and his blood is real drink. Whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood lives in Christ and Christ lives in him or her. This is the food we are privileged to eat in the holy sacrifice of the Mass each day. 

The Holy Mass is a sacrifice of thanksgiving. As the second reading (Eph. 5:15-20) exhorts us to be filled with the Spirit, sing the words and tunes of psalms and hymns when we are together, so that always and everywhere we are giving thanks to God who is our father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our sincere thanksgiving to God should be shown more by the kind of life we live, a life capable of letting others see Christ in us. It is only when we take the Eucharist as our spiritual food and allow it to nourish our souls that we can join the psalmist today in inviting others to “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”