Solemnity of Body and Blood Christ-Corpus Christi Joh 6,51-58

Eucharist—the Body of God, Holy Mass are things that are fundamentally, perfectly known to everyone and present daily in the life of the Church; they are the foundation of our faith. These are the truths that we live as Christians. If today we are celebrating the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, we would rather remind you of something that is the natural rhythm of a believer’s life. Perhaps that is why it will remind some people of things like “don’t forget to breathe if you don’t want to suffocate” or “you have to eat something so you don’t lose strength”. More or less, it seems like this.

The Eucharist should be our everyday life. Maybe that everyday life is understood in most cases as Sunday, but it should always create the fullest dimension of God’s presence, even physical presence, in our lives. There is nothing greater and more important in the Church than the Eucharist, which contains everything, the Church is built on: it makes present the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, it is the sacrament of his exaltation and mercy, a sign of unity and a paschal feast in which our human soul is filled with grace and receives a foretaste and a pledge of future glory (cf. CL 47).

On the one hand, the Eucharist is extraordinary, to be experienced with complete concentration and on one’s knees; on the other hand, it calls for an ordinary, everyday character. On the one hand, it reminds us of the festive nature of food we do not prepare daily; on the other, it speaks of the everydayness of bread, our daily food. However, if it were only festive food, it could not be festive bread. And yet we do not live by what we eat on holidays, but by what we eat daily. And therefore, the ordinariness of the Eucharist determines its exceptional character and perfectly conveys its mystery. The presence of Christ in the bread allows Him to be a daily feast in the hearts of hundreds of millions of Christians throughout the world.

During a dispute, Jesus said the words after which many left and no longer walked with Him: that whoever eats His Body and drinks His Blood abides in Him, and He in us (cf. Jn 6:56). But these were not empty words. Shortly afterward, in the Upper Room, Jesus will say very clearly: Take and eat, this is My Body… Take and drink, this is My Blood. These are the words that Christ speaks, and thanks to them, they have such power, the power to perform the miracle of the transformation of bread and wine into His true Body and Blood. Faith in the presence of Christ in the bread and wine is difficult, but for faith, there are no impossible things. It must be our effort of spirit and effort of heart to believe Christ that when He said, holding the bread in His hands, that it is His Body and His Blood – when He handed over the cup of wine, it is truly and truly so.

The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus thus introduces us to the house called the Cenacle to this day. A building which, despite being in the hands of the Mohammedans in old Jerusalem, is a place of veneration for both Christians and Jews. On the ground floor is the symbolic tomb of David, the most famous ruler of Israel, who ruled Palestine for 40 years. On the first floor of that building is a large room in which, according to tradition, the Lord Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples. That place is the source and beginning of every Eucharist, which is celebrated in the most remote corner of the world, but also here, in our midst, in our sanctuary. So we do not have to look far. That is why, perhaps, we often face greater spiritual or physical effort to reach that source and to see Christ here in the Eucharist, in the same way as he sat at the table in the Cenacle with the Apostles.

Today, on this feast day, we need to remember two special attitudes that we should adopt towards the Eucharist. The first of these is the Blessed Sacrament. When we consider all the interventions that accompany parents as their children receive the Blessed Sacrament for the first time, we can rightly conclude that this is truly a great matter. It would be good if such efforts for a solemn Sunday and the Eucharist did not end with May or June, but became a good habit, so that there was no Sunday without the Eucharist. If someone regularly goes to confession, if his conscience does not reproach him with grave sin, if he is aware of his daily, everyday weaknesses and seeks strength not to succumb to evil, then he must seek help and grace in frequent reception of the Eucharist, in that celebrated every Sunday, and perhaps even in daily reception of the Blessed Sacrament. Only grave, conscious, voluntary, and serious sin closes the way to that sacrament. Receiving the Blessed Sacrament is our wonderful privilege. Let us not look at it as a gift for holidays, but as our daily bread. The purpose of the Holy Mass, and of our personal and full participation, is actually to receive the Blessed Sacrament. This cannot be done over the radio or television.

In the celebration of the Eucharist, everything is directed towards the union of the faithful in the Blessed Sacrament. It is our personal, even intimate, way of glorifying Christ, of expressing our gratitude to Christ, and of encountering Him. It is an encounter so close that God becomes the Food to be as close to us as possible. Even if we are unable to receive the Blessed Sacrament sacramentally, we still desire spiritual communion. Even those who have obstacles and cannot receive the sacraments can express a deep and sincere desire to encounter the Eucharistic Christ. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a document from 1983, affirmed that a Christian can receive the fruits of the sacrament through the very desire for the Eucharist (see Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Sacerdotium ministeriale”, 6.VIII.1983, 4). Pope Benedict XVI expressed this desire in similar words when he recalled that even when sacramental reception of the Blessed Sacrament is not possible, participation in the Holy Mass remains necessary, important, significant, and fruitful. In this situation, it is good to nourish the desire for full union with Christ, for example, through the practice of spiritual reception of the Blessed Sacrament (Sacramentum caritatis, 55). Even those among us who live in an objective obstacle to receiving the sacraments must be aware of the interior transformation that takes place in them, even through the very desire to encounter Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Today, we must ask ourselves about our personal approach to the Blessed Sacrament. Am I not neglecting this gift, even by postponing Holy Confession, which in many cases also means renouncing the Blessed Sacrament? Is it possible that we do not have sin and do not receive the Blessed Sacrament, or are we determined to receive it only on feast days? Do parents make sure their children receive the Blessed Sacrament, even on First Fridays? The Blessed Sacrament is a gift from God. God gave Himself entirely as food in the Eucharist.

There is also a second way we glorify Christ in the Eucharist. This is adoration, that is, remaining and being present before the Blessed Sacrament, sometimes solemnly displayed in a monstrance, sometimes hidden in a tabernacle locked with a key. This form of prayer is one of the most beautiful and fruitful. Adoration shows our art of sacrificing our time to be before God, to offer Him our thoughts, our desires, our worries. Adoration is telling God that we love Him, coming to Him with what we have encountered. Ultimately, it is listening to what God says. Ten or fifteen minutes of adoration a day can make a big difference. Although it seems like a difficult form of prayer, we mustn’t get discouraged and discouraged from adoration. What will we do for 15 minutes before the tabernacle? We don’t need to do anything. Adoration is the abiding in and glorifying God, and is often the best use of 15 minutes during the day. It does not take much effort, except for the decision to sacrifice a moment for such prayer, to enter the church. One can enter, walk around, plan to go to adoration, and adore Jesus in the Eucharist during devotions when He is solemnly exposed in the monstrance. We have May and June devotions, the rosary, and increasingly “perpetual adoration,” sometimes all day and sometimes at night. Adoration can become a good religious habit. If we choose even one day a week to come to adoration, that will be a lot.

Understanding the Eucharist rests on the conviction that without the Eucharist, there is no life, for He is the Food. The physical, temporal life will continue to exist within us; no one dies without receiving the Holy Eucharist, but faith cannot be lived then. Faith will weaken and disappear until it disappears completely, and the need for God will be moved to another place, and then to another. The idea of ​​eternal life will be replaced by the idea of ​​only today. The values ​​of the commandments and the Gospel will prove unnecessary in such a world; we will have to invent our own. Everything that makes up the soul of man will die. It will die without the Eucharist.

The Eucharist gives life. It allows us to experience what is called the sense today and tomorrow, which carries us beyond death. The Eucharist is the pledge of eternal life, because in it is present the living and true God, our Lord Jesus Christ. St. Paul wrote in the Letter to the Ephesians about Christ. Who is the pledge of our inheritance for the redemption of those whom he has acquired, to the praise of his glory (Eph 1:14). A pledge is a part of what we are to receive in the future, but it is a part of what we are to receive with the guarantee that we will receive it. God guarantees us that we will have life forever and live with Christ forever. But that life of the soul must be maintained here on earth. Therefore, the Most Holy Sacrament is the food for eternal life, because without it there is no life.

Today is truly a good opportunity for us to make such a bold decision and be with Christ both in the Blessed Sacrament and in adoration. Today and throughout the week, we will magnify the Eucharist. Let us choose at least once or twice to go to the procession of the octave of Corpus Christi. Let us enter the church in the morning or afternoon for adoration. Let us take care of the state of sanctifying grace if someone has not been to confession.

May Christ be glorified in the signs of Bread and wine. May He be greeted in every tabernacle and every monstrance in the world carried out today into the streets and among the people. May He be glorified in every human heart that receives You in the Blessed Sacrament. You, in the Host – carried by the priest, I am Lord and God. There is no other. Before You – sooner or later – every knee will bow. May my knee bow today, too.