Have you ever started a diet? Maybe you wanted to lose weight, or just eat healthier so to feel more energized, be the best version of yourself. When you diet, you eat less food that is junk, high in sugar, pleasure foods, and go back to the basics, things that have more nutrition and give you what you need to thrive. You don't starve yourself, but get energized by good, wholseome foods. When attending Mass, we have a different kind of meal, gathering as a community to remember Jesus through the Eucharistic Celebration. When going up and taking the Eucharist, we are recieving Christ, recalling the great gift of love he have on the Cross, through his body and blood. Through this sacred offering, we are filled with the light and love of Christ, energized to go out and fill others with the same love. We fast before mass, so to truly give everything, our time, minds, hearts, spiritual and physical hunger, to that sacred time in mass, much more powerful than any reason we could have to fast for dieting right?

Today's Gospel states:'Now John's Disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and people came and said to him, "Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" And Jesus said to them, "Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; if he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but new wine is for fresh skins"' (Mark 2:18-22).

Today's reading talks about fasting, and the need for it. The people question Jesus, stating that their people fast, but his disciples do not. He tells them that they cannot fast while he is with them. They will be filled while he is with them. We think about this now in terms ofthe Eucharist in mass, that through taking this time to pray, to listen to God's Word and recieve Christ in the Eucharist, we are filled with the Holy Spirit, and energized to go out. What do you normally do after mass, stay home and relax, or embrace this mission we're given after receiving Christ, fully, in our lives? Take some time to pray and ask God to help you hunger for Him.

Today we pray:

Heavenly Father,

Thank You for giving Your one and only Son for me, for all people. Help me to hunger for You and You alone, and embrace my mission after mass, to be an evangelical disciple.

I pray in Your most holy name, Amen.