Within the past couple weeks have you eaten ham or jellybeans or Easter eggs? Those foods have now become yourself. The ham is no longer in the refrigerator or the jellybeans in the candy dish. They are no longer just in us either; they are us. This might not be the most exciting thought for us, but it is profound when we realize how much life-sharing Jesus Christ desires for us. “He wants to mingle his life thoroughly with ours—and of course, ours thoroughly with his” (Bruteau, The Easter Mysteries). And so Jesus gave us the food of the Eucharist, so that he could claim “I am in you and you are in me.” Through the Eucharist we have become the extension of Jesus Christ. Beatrice Bruteau continues: “But when this has happened to each of us, when each of us is engaged in life-sharing with Jesus, then he is living in the whole community of us: his Body has been intimately joined to the body of every person in the community. And since his Body is the most vital and the most vitalizing—the most life-giving—element in any of us, all of us together constitute a kind of extension of his Body.  And that enlarged Body acts as any living body does: it grows and unifies and develops; it supports diversity within itself by being secure in its unity; it operates as a system, without superiors or inferiors.”

Spend some time today reflecting on this:  We are the Body of Christ.