Fr. Michael Williams

When I went to school I didn’t very much like school dinners. We used to have mash potato with big lumps in it or concrete chips, and for afters we had runny semolina. I’m sure school dinners are a lot better now than when I when to school. I believe they are trying to make school dinners a lot healthier these days with the help of people like Jamie Oliver.

The reason I’m talking about food is because there is a saying, ‘you are what you eat’. In other words what we put into our bodies determines how healthy we are. If we fill our bodies with junk food and bad things it may have a damaging effect on our bodies and our health.

One of the Church’s famous saints, a man called St. Augustine, applied this idea of ‘you are what you eat’ to the spiritual life. He said that when we receive the Body of Christ in Holy Communion, we become the Body of Christ, the Church. We receive the Body of Christ and so become the Body of Christ: ‘you are what you eat’.

Today these children will receive Holy Communion, the Body of Christ, for the first time. By receiving the Body of Christ they will become the Body of Christ in a very special way. ‘You are what you eat’. Receiving Holy Communion is to transform them into the likeness of Christ.

To become the Body of Christ means that we do what Jesus does. To help us in our work as the Body of Christ there is a prayer to help us:

‘Lord Jesus,

I give you my hands to do your work

I give you my feet to go your way.

I give you my eyes to see as you do.

I give you my tongue to speak your words.

I give you my mind that you may think in me.

I give you my spirit that you may pray in me.

Above all,

I give you my heart that you may love in me,

Your Father, and all mankind.

I give you my whole self that you may grow in me,

So that it is you, Lord Jesus,

Who live and work and pray in me.

Amen.