It used to be that Labor Day flagged the start of the school year in the mid-state. Now it seems like August 15 – the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven – signals that school will soon begin. It’s hard to believe that students in southern and south-central states are already back in the classroom.
The start of the school year comes with back-to-school shopping. School clothes, school shoes, school supplies like notebooks, pencils, pens, crayons, glue, etc., and of course, a book bag to put them in.
Then of course there is the lunch box. People carrying a meal with them to work or school is nothing new. But the container used to do so has evolved. From a sack or bag, to a metal pail, to a metal box with a lid, to what has become known as the classic lunch box. It was about 1935 that the lunch box as we traditionally know it was born. In that year, cartoon characters were painted onto those little metal boxes. From there, the art form of lunch boxes began.
For decades now, images of superheroes, sports figures, cartoon characters, movie, TV, and music stars and teen idols, have appeared on lunchboxes.Some of them are highly sought after collectors’ items.
Whether it be a simple brown paper bag, a lunch box with your favorite action figure or pop star on it, one of the varieties of designer lunch bags now available, or one of those newly engineered lunch box systems with special containers and compartments, the most important part of the lunch box is not what it looks like but what is inside it.
That food, snack, meal, is meant to nourish and sustain us on our journey through the day.And when someone else packs that lunch box or bag for us…it’s a sign of love and a reminder that we are cared for, that we are special to someone.
The food that they give us – provide for us – is more important and even more beautiful than the container it is packed and carried in.
In the first reading today, the prophet Elijah is on a journey through the desert without food or water. He is exhausted and literally collapses under a tree.There, God provides him something to eat and drink.
We are right in the middle of our five-week summer journey through what is called the Bread of Life Discourse in the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. We hear Jesus tell us repeatedly that He is the Bread of Life.Why would the Church have us spend five straight weeks on this same theme? Because the Eucharist is that important! Because the Eucharist is that life-changing! Because the Eucharist is that real!
Jesus in the Eucharist – His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity – is the food for our journey.It sustains us on our journey through life. It nourishes us. It keeps us going.
The Eucharist reminds us of how profoundly loved we are by Jesus that He would give us Himself – His very self – to nourish and satisfy us when our hearts get hungry, when our spiritual blood sugar drops, when we need real comfort food.
He feeds us with Himself.He has given us the Eucharist – and entrusted it to the Church – and just like a loving parent packs a kid’s lunch box, our Holy Mother, the Church, gives it to us.
We need to eat.Our bodies need food to work, for energy, for our brains to work.When we don’t eat, we can become weak, faint, even cranky, grouchy and irritable with others.They call it the hangries. Maybe you know someone who gets them. Maybe that someone is you.
That’s why we pack a lunch.When we are hungry and worn out, if we eat something – something that is good for us or comforting to us – it energies us.It keeps us going.It gets us back on track.
That’s why the Eucharist is so important. That’s why our reception of it, making sure we receive it with our souls in the best shape they can be, is so life-giving and sustaining. We are so blessed to have it. We are so blessed to have Him! We can’t ever take it for granted. We can’t ever take Him for granted.
We all know how we can hunger for something, pine for something, want something and we just can’t get it. It could be something as practical as the particular brand of coffee or it could be something as sentimental as the stuffing my mother made for Thanksgiving.
Just think about all the things we wanted but couldn’t have during the COVID-19 pandemic and how hard that was. Things that were inconvenient like empty supermarket shelves to heartbreaking things like not being able to be with those who mean the most to us.
A survey of Catholics showed that among the many things Catholics missed, the biggest was receiving Holy Communion. While we did our best and stretched our creativity to keep connected with live-streaming, it just wasn’t the same. There is no substitute equal to it.
The Eucharist energies us, keeps us going, and helps us to be the best version of ourselves. To help us to do exactly what St. Paul tells us in the second reading today:
To remove all bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, malice from us.
So that we can treat each other with compassion,
love, and forgiveness. To be imitators of God.
We use that phrase you are what you eat.St. Augustine put it more elegantly this way: Become what you receive. Fed with Jesus, we are to be like Jesus. To be filled with Jesus.
St. Maximillian Kolbe, whose feast we celebrate this week (August 14) was a Catholic priest from Poland who died in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1941 taking the place of a husband and father who was scheduled to be executed, said this: If angels could be jealous of humans, they would be so for one reason: Holy Communion.
What an incredible gift we have – the most valuable gift there could ever be. Our food for the journey. May we never take it for granted.
(Father Sullivan is pastor of Good Shepherd Parish in Camp Hill.)
By Father Neil S. Sullivan, Special to The Witness
