MAHA, most Americans know these letters stand for Make America Healthy Again, a movement led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, the current Secretary of Health and Human Services.

 

MAHA’s overarching aim is to improve the health of all Americans. This begins with urging us to consider what we are putting into our bodies. As the saying goes, “We are what we eat.” Sugary drinks, processed meats, candies, pastries, white flour, fast food, packaged snacks, etc. will not make America healthy again.

 

This emphasis on health and diet is already showing results. Americans are becoming more health conscious and more discerning in their food choices. There are even biblically based diets being proposed whose nutritional choices are based on the foods mentioned in the scriptures.

 

This Sunday, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, the Church directs our attention to the true biblical diet that we need to follow if we are to be spiritually healthy and to grow in our relationship with Christ and his Church.

 

In the First Reading (Deuteronomy 8:2-3,14b-16a), Moses reminds the Chosen People of the diet that God provided them during their journey through the desert to the Promised Land. God fed them with manna from heaven, gave them water to drink from the flinty rock, and instructed them by the “word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord.”

 

In the Gospel (John 6:51-58), Jesus tells his disciples that the food he will give them would be far greater than the manna given their ancestors. This food would be his very body and blood. As he proclaimed, “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him…the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”

 

In our Second Reading (1 Corinthians 10:16-17), Paul tells the Corinthians that they are united as the body of Christ as they partake of the diet the Lord provides for them. “We, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.”

 

As we receive Holy Communion, we might thank the Lord for the life-giving food and drink that he provides by making the words of the following prayer our own:

 

Jesus, my Lord and my God, I thank you for taking on flesh and coming into this world to reveal the Father’s love, to save us from the power of sin and death, and to show us how to live as faithful children of God so that one day we might be welcomed to the everlasting joy of your kingdom.

 

Thank you for coming to me in the Eucharist that I have just received. Thank you for allowing me to share your life-giving Body and Blood that unites me with you, and with all those who share at your Holy Table. United with them, and with all the members of your Church, we are what we receive—we are a Holy Communion, we are the Body of Christ.

 

Through the power of this Sacrament, help me to reveal your presence in my life by the mercy, love, kindness, and compassion that I show to others. Jesus, my Lord and my God, you who sacramentally dwell within me, truly live and act in me. Amen!

 

MAHA reminds us of the importance of making good choices about what we eat and drink. In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus reminds us of that same thing: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.”

 

© 2026 Rev. Thomas Iwanowski