Every day water and matter and light come together and become food.
Every day we take food into our bodies and it becomes energy. It becomes thought and language and action.
Every day we turn fabric into clothes and trees into buildings and sounds into songs.
Every day morning becomes afternoon and afternoon becomes evening.
And this is all miracle. This is all the work of God.
I know we all feel small and insignificant. I know we all feel invisible.
But what could be more ordinary than wedding feast? What could be more ordinary than sitting together and drinking wine? Most of the people at the wedding in Cana, in the second chapter in John, don’t know a miracle has occurred at all.
But it has. The wine has run out, and Mary has spoken, and Jesus has turned the great jars of water into great jars of wine, and only the servants know he has, and they don’t understand, and this is always going on, this is always happening, in some profound and invisible way, and it can happen through us.
The other day I saw a man go up to another man and pay him a compliment. He put his hand on the man’s shoulder and spoke a kind word to him, and I saw the man’s face light up, transform, and I felt the air in that room change, I felt some increase occur inside of all of us.
Just a look. A word.
“Any increase that I can bring upon myself or upon things,” says Chardin, “is translated into some increase in my power to love and some progress in God’s blessed hold on the universe. With every creative thought or action, a little more health is being spread in the human mass, and in consequence, a little more liberty to act, to think, and to love.”
Of course the bread and the wine become the Body and Blood. Everything does, and always has done, and so do we. In the Eucharist we become Eucharist, we become what we receive, every one of us, you no less than me, and if we believe this and if we act on this, everything changes, in us and around us.
This is of infinite importance. On this transformation within us—on this conversion—everything in the universe depends.