The solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus (Corpus Christi) is a significant feast in the Roman Catholic Church celebrated yearly two weeks after Pentecost. This feast honors the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. The bread and wine are transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ during every celebration of Mass.
In the Gospel verse for this weekend, Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” (Jn 6:51-52)
Going deeper into this same passage, we can see that many Christians today are not unlike the Jews of the time.
The Jews quarrelled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. 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. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” (Jn. 6:51-58)
Jesus gives himself to us, to everyone. He gives us himself in Eucharist and makes us able to pursue our journey toward Heaven, toward eternity. We partake of Christ’s love in Holy Communion. Jesus himself is Eucharist: an anticipation of what we will live in eternity together.
The Eucharist gives us the experience of rediscovering the “Community”, and of “Encountering the community”. It is the laboratory of fraternity. This is why a Christian can never be content with personal prayer because there are times when the Community, Jesus’s friends, gather together to pray. The ultimate gathering, source and summit is Eucharist. In this gathering, we listen to the Word and nourish ourselves on the real presence of Christ
