In our daily life, we must eat and drink, so that we may have strength. Our body needs it to survive. Food and drinks are good for our bodie; they help us to have good physical health. In today´s gospel, we heard, “This is the bread that came down from heaven”, Jesus said, it is "my flesh", it is "my blood". It is this flesh we need to eat and the blood we need to drink if we want to live. These words of Jesus are very strong that the provoked different reactions from the disciples: this is too hard to hear. For this reason, many disciples left Jesus. That is why Jesus asked the apostles, do you want to go? And Peter answered ."you have words of eternal life" and so, they stayed with Jesus. The words of Jesus were very strong , somehow unacceptable for a Jew, because eating human flesh and drinking human blood were forbidden. For the Jews, blood was the source of life. It was forbidden to drink the blood of animals. Eating human meat was a sin: it is cannibalism. However, Jesus is saying, very strongly, "you must eat my flesh, you must drink my blood, this is the bread that I will give you." It is the bread and wine that we consecrated during the Eucharist, it is the body and blood of Christ.
To receive the body and blood of Christ during the Eucharist, It is good, but not enough; we must eat the bread and drink the blood; we must eat the life of Jesus, so that, it becomes our own life. We must eat the life of Jesus; we must take the life of Jesus and make it our own life, which means living in the same way that Jesus showed us. The Eucharist is the sacrament that helps us, but it is not enough. We can receive the communion hundreds of times but still be the same as before. We can go often to church, but our lives do not change. The sacrament is a help and an instrument that Jesus gave us. The real goal for us is to take and to have the same life of Jesus. When I receive Jesus in the Eucharist, I should live as he lives. His life becomes my life. If somebody hurts me and I manage to forgive that person, I am living the life of Jesus. Saint Augustine tells us, referring to the Eucharist, that “we become what we eat.” If we eat the body of Christ, we will become "another Christ", the one who serves, who loves. This is what we ask when we receive the body of Christ; we may be able to imitate Christ by serving, loving, forgiving, and helping others as Jesus did.

1. When I receive the Eucharist, how does it inspire me to live more like Jesus in my daily life through love, service, forgiveness, and compassion?
2. What areas of my life still need to be transformed so that, as Saint Augustine says, I may truly “become what I eat” and reflect the life of Christ to others?