BECOMING WHAT WE EAT


FEAST OF SAINT MARK, EVANGELIST   

Pet 5:5-14; Ps 89:2-3,6-7,16-17; Mk 16:15-20

Vocation to feed the People with Jesus Christ

Remaining spiritually young and agile depends on what we feed our spirits. Since the maintenance of a thing of nature usually comes from the same principle that gave it existence, the word of God that gave us spiritual life also sustains it. We obtained spiritual life through believing in the resurrection of the Son of Man, which we confessed at our baptism. The same confession of faith in the Risen Lord makes us grow in our spiritual life. This confession of faith in the resurrection of the Lord is ritually expressed when we receive the Lord in the Eucharist. Our reception of the Sacrament of his body and blood, includes his soul and divinity. We can receive the Sacrament, the bread and wine, without faith, but the reality of his body and blood, his soul and divinity we definitely cannot receive without faith. If, therefore, we believe in his divinity, then we are professing his resurrection whenever we receive the Sacrament of his body and blood, the Eucharist. The action of receiving his body and blood, soul and divinity, renews our baptismal profession of faith in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Since we received our spiritual life through baptism, our spiritual life is renewed and nourished by the Eucharist, a ritual, an act, and a reality. We become what we eat. So, by our conscious participation in the Eucharist, we draw life from Jesus Christ and live by him daily, as he drew life from his Father and lived by him.

Subsequently, since the life of the Son of Man is properly a sacrifice unto the Father, we, who eat his body and drink his blood every day, gradually become sweet smelling sacrifices unto the Father. Because the kingdom of God extends everywhere, but most especially where his will is done objectively and subjectively, we gradually realise heaven within us and without. Understanding that the Son of Man was able to realise the kingdom of God among us through his profound humility that made him obey the Father in all things, Saint Peter urges us to embrace the life of humility in imitation of Jesus Christ. “All wrap yourselves in humility to be servant of each other, because God refuses the proud and will always favour the humble. Bow down, then, before the power of God now, and he will raise you up on the appointed day unload all your worries on to him, since he is looking after you.” This advice from Saint Peter is in accord with the Eucharistic words and action of our Lord, in which he teaches us to lay down our lives for each other as he has done for us. By the humble actions and little sacrifices in imitation of Christ, we are able to overcome the forces of evil and their kingdom of darkness and establish the kingdom of God on earth.

The strength and the grace required for these daily sacrifices are what the Eucharistic food and drink offer us, through our faith in Jesus Christ. Hence, we stand up to the devil by standing close to Christ and to each other in Eucharistic communion. “Stand up to him, strong in faith and in the knowledge that your brothers all over the world are suffering the same things. By drawing life and strength from the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and in the Scriptures, we are able to fulfil the mandate of the Risen Lord to proclaim the Good News to all nations and peoples. “Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation. He who believes and is baptised will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned.” Not to believe the Gospel of the Son of God is to make God a liar. Such a person is already condemned for not believing the testimony the Son of God in human nature.

Saint Mark, by writing down for us this account of the life and preaching of Jesus Christ, acted as an instrument of God for the establishment of eternal and ordered proclamation of the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ. His Gospel is represented by the winged lion, which portrays him as a fast-paced messenger of God. He presented the divine truth of Christ’s life with sincerity and abandon. He highlighted the royalty of Christ, his resurrection, and the “voice crying in the wilderness.” The ferocity of the lion is marched with the wings, which indicate divine inspiration. This image of his Gospel marches well with the image of the devil as a prowling lion, seeking for someone to devour. Saint Mark empowers us with his Gospel to stand up to him transformed into the Lion of Judah, with the Holy Spirit inspiring every word, thought, and action. “The heavens proclaim your wonders, O Lord; the assembly of your holy ones proclaims your truth. For who in the skies can compare with the Lord or who is like the Lord among the sons of God?”

Let us pray: O God, who raised up Saint Mark, your Evangelist, and endowed him with the grace to preach the Gospel, grant, we pray, that we may so profit from his teaching as to follow faithfully in the footsteps of Christ. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.    

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