The more I become myself, the more I become Christ.

The more I become myself, the more I become Christ.

There are creatures that live and move within their own shelters. Their coverings are not just protection—they are identity. Strip them away, and we may not even recognize them.

I began to see myself like that.

Like a walking home.

A place where I live and have my being.
When I move, the house moves.
When I stop, it rests.
I am its life.

But something had gone wrong.

I was inside the house, yet I was not there.
I had begun to believe that I was only a wall… or the ceiling… sometimes even the floor.
When the house moved, I moved—but I no longer knew that I was the one giving it life.

This is the disconnection I have lived with.

And then comes the Eucharist.

When I receive Jesus, He comes into me as God—fully, entirely, undiminished. Nothing in me, nothing outside of me, can reduce who He is. He does not become less because He comes to me.

So if nothing seems to happen…
if there is no immediate transformation…
if I remain as I am—

it is not because God has failed to act.

It is because He has chosen how to act.

He comes gently.
He comes hidden.
He comes in a way that respects me.

He does not force transformation.
He waits for consent.

He enters so deeply into me that He does not overpower my freedom, my condition, or my pace. He abides. He allows. He waits—for the moment when I am ready.

Ready not just to imitate Him…

…but to become one with Him.

For someone like me—disconnected, absent to myself—the first thing He does is unexpected.

He does not overwhelm me.

He restores me.

He enthrones me within myself.

He makes me aware that I exist.
That I am loved.
That I am not an afterthought.

He reveals my worth… my belovedness… how deeply I am cherished.

Because the truth is, for years, I did not live as myself.

I lived as fragments.

A wall.
A ceiling.
A reflection shaped by others.

I handed over the strings of my dignity to the opinions around me. I moved based on validation. I existed only in the eyes of others.

I survived on how I thought I was seen.

But I did not exist within myself.

And if I do not exist…

how can Christ live in me?

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In the Eucharist, something mysterious unfolds.

Not a replacement.
Not a destruction.

A transformation.

Just as in transubstantiation, the appearances remain while the reality is changed into Christ, so too something happens within me. Christ does not erase me—He transforms me.

I remain myself.

And yet, I become more than myself.

I become in Him.

Imagine this.

What if your heart decided that the best it could do was to be “like you,” and not truly You?
What if your hands, your lungs, your very being only imitated you instead of being you?

You would not be present.

It is their full participation in your being that makes you who you are.

In the same way, my life finds its fulfillment not in becoming “Christ-like” from a distance…

…but in allowing Christ to become my very life.

Not imitation.

But Communion.

“God became man so that man might become God.”
—St. Athanasius

This is not a loss of self.

This is its fulfillment.

And it begins—quietly, gently, powerfully—

each time I receive Him.

Because in the Eucharist,

I do not merely receive Christ.

I become what I receive.