Corpus Christi
June 7, 2026
Christ is with us in the Eucharist; we are the body of Christ.
John 6:51-58
Jesus said to the Jewish crowds: "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." The Jews quarreled 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."
REFLECTIONS ON THE GOSPEL
First Impressions — Body and Blood of Christ, June 7, 2026 by Jude Siciliano, OP
Today we celebrate Corpus Christi – The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. It is the third in a series of “big feasts,” preceded by Pentecost and last week’s Trinity Sunday. Next week we return to Ordinary Time, counting, with a few exceptions, the Sundays until Advent. Today’s solemnity developed in the Church during the Middle Ages as a way to focus special attention on Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist. We celebrate the Eucharist at every Mass but today invites us to praise and reflect more deeply on the gift Jesus gave at the Last Supper: his Body and Blood offered for the life of the world. The feast began in the 13th century and was promoted by a Belgian nun, St. Juliana of Liège. At that time there was growing theological reflection on the Eucharist, as well as debate about how Christ is truly present in the bread and wine consecrated at Mass. The feast helped strengthen the Church’s teaching that Christ is truly and substantially present in the Eucharist – not merely symbolically but really present under the appearances of bread and wine. In our Brooklyn parish, today’s feast was an occasion for a Eucharistic procession. The consecrated host was carried through the streets while the congregation followed behind, praying and singing hymns. We had a sense of walking together with Christ, not just within the church walls, but into our everyday lives in the world. We were expressing devotion but also making a public proclamation of faith to our Protestant and Jewish neighbors. What drew some of us kids to the procession – besides our principal, Sister Albina’s orders – were the snacks we had afterward in the church basement. The readings for Corpus Christi emphasize themes of covenant, sacrifice, nourishment, and community. We are reminded today that the Eucharist is not only something to be adored, but also a call to become the Body of Christ for others through lives of charity, reconciliation, and service. Today we celebrate that our God has come close to us and does not leave us. The Eucharist reminds us that Christ continues to feed, strengthen, forgive, and unite us as God’s people. We are called again to gratitude, reverence, and renewed commitment as we endeavor to live what we profess at the altar. In today’s Gospel (John 6:51–58), Jesus speaks words that startled his listeners and continue to challenge us today: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” He does not merely describe himself as a teacher who offers wisdom and guidance. He offers his very self as food for the life of the world. At the heart of today’s feast is this astonishing gift: Christ remains with us, nourishing us through the Eucharist. Many found Jesus’ words hard to understand. They understood only physical hunger and physical bread: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” But Jesus was speaking about a deeper hunger within the human heart – hunger for meaning, forgiveness, communion, hope, and eternal life. The Eucharist answers that deeper hunger because it is not simply a sacred symbol; it is Christ giving himself completely to us. Every time we come to the altar, we are invited into communion not only with Christ, but also with one another. The Eucharist is never a private devotion alone. We receive the Body of Christ so that we may become the Body of Christ in the world. Bread is broken at the altar, calling us to become people who are broken open in love and service for others. Today’s feast reminds us that God does not remain silent or distant. In Jesus, God chooses closeness. The Eucharist is Christ’s abiding presence among us: strengthening the weary, forgiving sinners, comforting the sorrowful, and drawing the Church together across every boundary. Today we are invited not only to adore Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, but also to recognize him in daily life: in the poor, the forgotten, the suffering, and those who hunger for compassion and dignity.
A Brief Look at the Deuteronomy Reading
The reading from Deuteronomy prepares the way for understanding the Eucharist by recalling God’s gift of manna in the desert. Moses reminds the people that during their years of hunger and wandering, God fed them with “food unknown” to them, teaching that “not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Placed alongside the New Testament Eucharistic readings, the faithful learn that just as God fed Israel on the journey through the wilderness, Christ now feeds God’s people on their journey through life with the “living bread come down from heaven” in the Eucharist. Deuteronomy emphasizes memory and gratitude: “Do not forget the Lord.” Corpus Christi is also a feast of remembrance – not mere recalling but entering again into Christ’s saving gift made present in the Eucharist. Israel survived because God nourished them daily; so too does the Church. Believers are spiritually sustained by Christ’s Body and Blood. Just as God fed Israel in the wilderness, so too our lives can feel like a desert marked by hunger, testing, and uncertainty. The Eucharist is food for pilgrims, strengthening believers just as manna strengthened Israel. The Deuteronomy reading helps us see the Eucharist not simply as a ritual meal, but as God’s faithful provision for God’s people on our journey toward the promised Kingdom.
Quotable
“Carrying the Blessed Sacrament through the streets means bringing Jesus into the daily life of the people.” —Pope Francis, Corpus Christi Homily, 2019
Justice Bulletin Board by Barbara Molinari Quinby, MPS, Director Office of Human Life, Dignity, and Justice Ministries Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Raleigh, NC
“We, though many, are one body.”—1 Corinthians 10:17
Today’s scripture passage made me think of a term made popular by Saint Pope John Paul II—solidarity. I have an old book of inspirational thoughts called Leaves of Gold (Coslett, 1948) that I like to open on occasion and then reflect upon the words I find written there. One of its little pieces of wisdom seems to be a good definition of the meaning of solidarity. There is an old legend of a general who found his troops disheartened. He believed it was owing to the fact that they did not realize how close they were to the other divisions of the same army on account of a dense growth of small trees and shrubbery, Orders therefore were given to “Burn the underbrush.” It was done and they saw they were not isolated as they had supposed but were part of one great army. . .So let us burn the brushwood. . .of prejudice, mistrust, and separation. We all have far more in common than we think. We are all under the same great Captain. (127). Our U.S. Catholic Bishops have expressed the same sentiment: We are one human family whatever our national, racial, ethnic, economic, and ideological differences. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, wherever they may be. Loving our neighbor has global dimensions in a shrinking world. http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/solidarity.cfm Taking our understanding of solidarity a step further, the First Letter to the Corinthians states in 12:26, “If one member of Christ’s body suffers, all suffer.”What is the solution for Catholic Christians? The USCCB document, Economic Justice for All (365) gives us the answer: We have to move from our devotion to independence, through an understanding of interdependence, to a commitment to human solidarity. That challenge must find its realization in the kind of community we build among us. Love implies concern for all - especially the poor - and a continued search for those social and economic structures that permit everyone to share in a community that is a part of a redeemed creation (Rom 8:21-23). How are you practicing solidarity? What steps are you taking to bring down the human walls of prejudice, mistrust, and separation? We are one body.
Faith Book
Mini-reflections on the Sunday scripture readings designed for persons on the run. “Faith Book” is also brief enough to be posted in the Sunday parish bulletins people take home.
From today’s Deuteronomy reading:Moses said to the people, “Remember how for forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert....”
Reflection: “Remember,” Moses instructs us. And so, we do. We recall how the bread of life has fed us day by day, often in ways we did not recognize at first. But now we do and now, at this community meal, we remember and give thanks.
So, we ask ourselves: The last time I went through a difficult period, who or what gave me strength to continue my desert journey? How can I now serve the “bread of life” to another who is finding the daily journey hard?
First Impressions — The Body and Blood of Christ, June 11, 2023 by Jude Siciliano, OP
The author of our Deuteronomy reading today recalls how God helped the enslaved Israelites in the past. God freed them, stayed with them and fed them for 40 years as they traveled the punishing desert to freedom. At first it sounds like the author is merely recording a historical event “way back then,” when God did marvelous deeds for a desperate people. But while the events recalled in Deuteronomy happened long before the author’s writings, the text is not just giving a look-back to a bygone age when God acted powerfully on the people’s behalf. There are two key expressions in the reading that tell us the writer of Deuteronomy was addressing the present, not merely reminiscing. The reading starts, “Remember how…”, to remind the people that God fed them in their wanderings. God stayed with them despite their complaints and infidelities. The suggestion to the readers: just as God did not abandon the people back then; nor will God abandon us now on whatever difficult journey we find ourselves. But, God will strengthen us as we are confronted by present trials and temptations. To make the point Deuteronomy says it again: “Do not forget.” As difficult and life-threatening as their lives became, God guided the people, helped them survive the poisonous snakes and scorpions (how dangerous was that!) and gave them water from the rock. God did the unexpected -- water from rock -- and still is surprising us along the way of our journey. It is a repetitious narrative throughout both Testaments: humans cannot “solve,” or “thrive,” under our own powers
through life’s stresses and temptations. But, we can count on God not to leave us on our own. Help may not come immediately, as the Jews learned during their difficult, 40-year desert trek, but God was with them each day along the way and promised to stay with them -- and us. Which leads us to today’s gospel, further proof of God’s tender and parental care for those who turn to God in need. John is inviting us, by suggestion, to follow Deuteronomy’s urging to “remember” and “do not forget.” Guided by our Jewish roots, followers of Jesus are invited to also remember what God is doing for us now in Jesus. Prior to today’s passage Jesus had miraculously multiplied bread for the people. His miracles stirred the crowd to see him as the Prophet. Jesus is going to feed the hungry crowds, with himself, “living bread.” Jesus is invoking in his listeners’ memory what God once did for their ancestors and continues to do for them. The desert wanderers would never have survived without God’s daily and concrete care -- bread and water in the desert, each and every day. They were not self-sufficient and neither are we. By using food to teach us, Jesus is reminding us that we are dependent on God’s constant care. The wilderness described in Deuteronomy is not only past tense, but present tense as well. Our community of believers needs nourishment in this struggling time of disaffection, betrayals, fatigue and loss. At this point we can also name our personal wilderness experiences: our loss and discouragement; our hurts and fragile faith; our questions about ourselves and God. Jesus has not stayed “on high” leaving us to confront the challenges to our faith on our own. We are not self sufficient; he is our “living bread,” who has joined us in our wilderness stumblings, misdirections and missteps. He is the surest sign of God’s love for us and in our hunger for that love we are like infants dependent on our parent God to
feed us the bread we need at this moment of our sojourn—Jesus Christ. Chapter 6 in John is a long, bread discourse in which Jesus is offering himself as real food. We pause and reflect on where we have gone looking for meaning and nourishment and have come back even hungrier than when we started. Did we think material things and bodily pleasure would satisfy us? And they didn’t. So then, where shall we find a life-giving bread that will not disappoint? We who believe in Jesus find the gift of life in his very person. John is writing in eucharistic language directing us to the flesh and blood of Christ we find in our eucharistic celebration, in the meal we share with one another around this table. It is real food and real drink and in eating and drinking it we will be equipped for the service and witness we are called to make in Jesus’ name.
Here at this Eucharist we experience eternal life. Here we meet the very broken flesh and poured out blood of Jesus that God gives us; the same generous and loving God who fed the hungry and searching Jews in the desert. We the hungry will feed on the “living bread” that is Jesus and then, like him, we will go forth to feed the hungry and be for them the living bread we have become in Christ.
One Good Book for Us All
Donald Senior: Jesus: A Gospel Portrait (New York: Paulist Press, 1992, paper)
This is a book not only for the preacher, but for the general reader interested in learning the fruits that biblical scholarship can provide to help us better know the person of Jesus and what made him someone people would follow, sacrifice and even die for. The author examines how each gospel developed and expanded the message of Jesus for their times and community’s needs. For a fuller review of this book go to our preaching webpage: https://www.preacherexchange.com/ and click on “Book Reviews.”
Justice Bulletin Board by Barbara Molinari Quinby, MPS, Director, Office of Human Life, Dignity, and Justice Ministries Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral Raleigh, NC
“He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger.” —Deuteronomy 8:3
One thing that I know about Catholics---when we get together, we like to eat! And, I want to add that we like for other, less fortunate, people to eat also. So today, my column salutes the parishioners of ministries at Holy Name of Jesus that strive to make the world a better place by reducing hunger. Catholic Parish Outreach (CPO), the Triangle’s largest food pantry, has
been in existence for 46 years and currently provides one week’s worth of healthy groceries every 30 days for those who are food deprived. In 2021, CPO distributed over 1.5 million pounds of food to over 58,000 individuals with a small staff and over 600 volunteers to residents of Wake, Franklin, & Johnston Counties. The growing client base has resulted in five moves to larger facilities since 1977. The only thing sad about these statistics is that they indicate that feeding the poor has become a growth industry. For over 20 years, dinners at the Helen Wright Center for Women are served once a month by two alternating teams. Approximately, 60 homeless women are served a nourishing sit-down meal. Again, this represents an increase in need. Oak City Cares Meals Ministry serves on the 2nd & 3rd Saturdays of every month. This ministry began at Moore Square where one of our teams was even serving food when a tornado came through downtown Raleigh on April 16, 2011. Both teams prepare food from home and bring it to a city facility on South Wilmington Street to make sure the homeless will get something to eat on weekends. Then there is the Women’s Center Lunch Ministry that provides nutritious
lunches for homeless, single women throughout the year. Now, I have run out of space and I haven’t mentioned all of the
ministries, like Walking with Moms in Need, who host the CPO baby collection in August for formula and food, and Farm Workers summer meal for migrant workers, and the gifts of food to families of those who have died or parishioners who are recovering from surgery (like me, this past January!) What a grace you are, Holy Name of Jesus, to those who hunger.
Let’s also advocate to end hunger and, wink, we can always use more cooks!
Faith Book
Mini-reflections on the Sunday scripture readings designed for persons on the run. “Faith Book” is also brief enough to be posted in the Sunday parish bulletins people take home.
From today’s Gospel reading: Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in them. 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.
Reflection: In some Christian traditions there is an “altar call,” a moment when those who have heard the Word of God are invited to come forward to “accept Jesus into your life.” Each time we come forward to receive the eucharistic bread and wine we are expressing our desire to take Jesus into our lives. We are responding to an “altar call” after having heard
the Word. We come forward to receive the One whose life can shape our lives. In receiving his body and blood, his life, we are asking that our lives reflect, as his did, our compassionate and forgiving God.
So we ask ourselves: How does my receiving the Eucharist shape how I live my life? If I never again received the Eucharist, what difference would that make?
Transubstantiation/Consubstantiation/Real Presence: A Little Theology Lesson
Reference: Enclycopedia of Cathollicism, Father Richard McBrien, General Editor
A little prequel: To understand this concept one needs the clarification of what being (ontos) really is. A little ontological definition from the University of Notre Dame:93. Substance is being existing in itself; accident is being existing in another as its subject. -- Being is known either as something which subsists in itself without needing to be sustained by another, or as something which needs a subject in which and by which it may exist. In the former case, being is called substance; in the latter, it is called accident. Thus "Peter" is a substance, because he exists in himself; "white" is an accident, because it does not exist without a substance in which it inheres. Substance is also defined negatively as that which is not in another as its subject; or descriptively as that which sustains accidents. But from the fact that a substance exists in itself, we are not to infer that it excludes the idea of a cause which produces it, but only that of a subject in which it inheres. To define substance, with Descartes, as "that which exists in such a way as to need nothing else for its existence," is to open the door to pantheism.
Transubstantiation: Teaching of the Church that the substance of bread and wine offered at the Eucharist is changed into the substance of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The term emerged out of medieval attempts to resolve the conflict between seeing bread and wine as mere signs or asserting their change into the body and blood of Christ even in their physical components. In the late eleventh century theologians described the change that occurs at the Eucharist in terms of the change of the substance of bread and wine, which undergoes transformation into the Lord’s body and blood. The term “transubstantiation” itself is only found in the twelfth century, and was subsequently used at Lateran IV ( 1215). Under the influence of Aristotelian thought, theologians gradually came to distinguish between the substance of the Eucharist ( the body and blood of Jesus Christ) and the accidents of bread and wine (weight, texture, color. etc). these remain even as the substance of bread and wine changes into Christ’s body and blood. In response to opposition to transubstantiation from the Reformers of the sixteenth century, the Council of Trent in 1551 affirmed that the substance of bread and wine is changes onto that of Christ’s, adding that ”this change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly named transubstantiation. Trent’s use of the word was intended not to explain how the change takes place but to provide a term that describes what takes place. Theological attempts in the latter part of the twentieth century to define the substance (transignification and transfinalization) led Pope Paul VI to insist in Mysterium Fidei ( 1965) that the new meaning and finality of the consecrated bread and wine are grounded in the new ontological reality of the presence of the body and blood of the Lord.
Real Presence:This is a teaching of the Catholic Church that Jesus Christ is present at and in the ‘eucharist his body and blood, humanity and divinity, under the form of bread and wine. The NT attests to the faith of Catholics and other Christians that Christ is present in and tohis church in a variety of ways. As the risen Lord, he is no longer bound by the constraints of a particular time and place and thus can be present when his disciples gather together to pray, invoke his name for healing, proclaim his gospel, forgive sins, suffer for his sake, and assemble to remember his Last Supper with his disciples. Fundamental to the recognition of this presence was the church’s experience of the power of the Spirit of the Lord transforming it into the community of his body and empowering it to continue his mission. (See accounts of the Last Supper: Mt 26:26-30; Mark 14 22;26; Luke 22 14-20;John6 6:52-56 1 Corinthians 11:23-25; John, Chapter 6. There is strong evidence of the belief of the first-century church in the presence of the body and blood of Christ.) Throughout the first millennium, the faith of the Church in Christ’s real Presence went relatively undisturbed. But some controversy developed in the ninth century and developed further in the eleventh century between extreme positions that saw the bread and wine as merely signs or as totally changed, even in their physical elements. Out of these controversies came the Church’s teaching on Transubstantiation ( see above). Contemporary Church teaching and theology has placed the doctrine of the Real Presence within the context of the many ways in which Christ is present in the church. Paul VI (1965 in Mysterium Fidei). He identifies them as prayer, works of mercy, preaching, governance, the Sacraments, and finally The Eucharist, a way the surpasses all others. Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy spoke of Christ’s presence not only in the consecrated bread and wine, but also in the proclaimed word, the person of the minister, and the worshipping assembly itself. The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist flows from his total self-gift on the cross and his will to make that gift effective for all people throughout history.
(Adapted from articles by S.T.D. professor of Systematic Theology, Seminary of the Immaculate Conception)
ENCOUNTER CHRIST REFLECTIONS AND MEDITATIONS
Music Meditations for the Week (All are on YouTube)
I am the bread of Life—John Michael Talbot
We Remember—Marty Haugen
Panis Angelicus—Pavarotti--the Duets with Sting
Mozart Ave Verum Corpus—Holy Thursday Catholic Community at Stanford
One bread, One Body—John Michel Talbot
O Salutaris Hostia—Cathedral singers, Richard Proulx, conducting
Opening Prayer
From The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius: A Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading, by David Fleming, S.J.—Take Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will—all that I have and all that I call my own. You have given it all to me. To you Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace. That is enough for me (p.141)
Companions for the Journey
From Father Michael Marsh: “ Do You Have Life?
A friend of mine called last week. She asked, “How are you?” It’s a common question, one we ask and are asked every day. You and I both know the standard answers and I gave them. I said, “Fine. I’m doing well. Things are really busy right now. I’m good.” She laughed and said, “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” I suspect I’m not the only one who’s had this type of conversation. Most of us have these kind of conversations several times each day. We offer the usual answers. Sometimes we add something about our family, our health, where we have been, or what we have been doing. More often than not those conversations focus on the circumstances of life. We might be fine and busy, getting our work done, meeting deadlines and commitments, fulfilling obligations, volunteering our time, and loving and caring for our families but there is a difference, a vast difference, between doing life and having life within us. Doing life or having life; that’s the issue Jesus is concerned about. That’s the focus of today’s gospel. It is important enough that it has been the subject of the last several Sundays of gospel readings. Each week has brought us closer to the unspoken question behind today’s gospel: Is there life within you? That’s a hard question and one which many will avoid or ignore. They will turn back and walk away rather than face the question. “Fine,” “busy,” “good,” and “doing well” do not answer the question. They cover it up. The question pushes us to discover the hunger within us and the life Jesus wants to feed us. That’s what Jesus has been after these last few weeks. Three weeks ago 5000 hungry people showed up. They were fed with five loaves and two fish. They didn’t understand. They thought it was about loaves and fish. It was really about life and where life comes from. Two weeks ago Jesus challenged us to consider the bread we eat. Is it perishable bread or does it endure to eternal life? Last week Jesus declared himself to be the bread of life, the living bread they came down from heaven. Today he says, “Eat me. Drink me.” This is the only way we ever have life within us. Jesus is very clear and blunt about it. His flesh is true food and his blood is true drink. Any other diet leaves us empty and hollow, hungry and bereft of life would never end. In that moment we are in the flow, the wonder, and the unity of life, and it tastes good. “Very truly, I tell you unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you.” Those are ominous words, words that haunt and challenge us to consider whether there is life within us Jesus is talking about more than just physical or biological life. He’s talking about that life that is beyond words, indescribable, and yet we know it when we taste it. We get a taste of it when we love so deeply and profoundly that everything about us dies, passes away, and somehow we are more fully alive than ever before. Sometimes everything seems to fit together perfectly and all is right with the world; not because we got our way but because we knew our self to be a part of something larger, more beautiful, and more holy than anything we could have done. We were tasting life. There are moments when time stands still and we wish the moment Most of us spend a fair amount of time, energy, and prayer trying to create and possess the life we want. In spite of our best efforts sometimes we live less than fully alive. Sometimes the outside and inside of who we are don’t match up. We ask ourselves, “What am I doing with my life?” We wonder if this is all there will ever be. Is this as good as it gets? We lament at what has become of us and our life. Nothing seems to satisfy. We despair at what is and what we think will be. Despite family and friends we find no place in which we really belong. Those questions and feelings are not so much a judgement on us, but a diagnosis of us. They are symptoms that there is no life in us. We are dying from the inside out. There is, however, treatment for our condition and food for our hunger. Life in Christ, not death in the wilderness, is our destiny. The flesh and blood of Christ are the medicine that saves; what St. Ignatius called “the medicine of immortality.” One dose, however, is not enough. We need a steady diet of this sacred medicine, this holy food. Jesus is our medicine and our health. He is our life and the means to the life for which we most deeply hunger. We don’t work for the life we want. We eat the life we want. Wherever human hunger and the flesh and blood of Christ meet, there is life. In the eating and drinking of Christ’s flesh and blood he lives in us and we live in him. We consume his life that he might consume and change ours. We eat and digest his life, his love, his mercy, his forgiveness, his way of being and seeing, his compassion, his presence, and his relationship with the Father. We eat and drink our way to life. So leave nothing behind. Push nothing to the side. Clean your plate! “Whoever eats me will live because of me,” Jesus said.
Living the Good News
What action can you take in the next week as a response to today's reading and discussion? Keep a private journal of your prayer/actions responses this week. Feel free to use the personal reflection questions which follow.
Reflection Questions:
Do I see Jesus as the face of God actually near at hand—“God with us”?
What does it mean to live in Jesus?
How easy is it to get snarled up in the theology of the Real Presence on this occasion?
How can this be an intellectual exercise and a distraction?
Some early believers were horrified at this assertion of Jesus. How do Jesus’ statements about eating his body and drinking his blood challenge me?
Do I spend more time trying to understand this mystery than actually experiencing this mystery?
What message do I take from this gospel that I can use in my everyday life, my everyday relationship with God?
What is the difference for me between doing life and having life?
What do I want from life?
Do I think it is what Jesus wants for me?
This passage follows an earlier and very famous one on the feeding of the five thousand.
How does the motif of God feeding his people enrich my appreciation of Eucharist?
What is the reason for keeping people from this table of life we call Eucharist?
Whose table is it?
Who gets to decide who is welcome at the table and who is not?
When I receive communion, do I think of union with Jesus or union with those around me? Both?
How do I respond to the living presence of Jesus within me?
In what ways do I make the Eucharist truly meaningful for those in my life?
When I receive the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, do I reflect on my identity as a member of the body of Christ?
What is my response to this gift of Jesus?
Who are members of the body of Christ?
What are our obligations to others in the body of Christ?
Closing Prayer
Don’t forget to provide some prayer time at the beginning and at the end of the session (or both), allowing time to offer prayers for anyone you wish to pray for.
Lord, you have given me everything, my life, my loved ones, my faith; you have given me your very self. Help me to do the same for all whom I meet. Help me to be the Body and Blood of Christ for others.
Weekly Memorization
Taken from the gospel for today's session: I have life because of the Father; so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
For the Week Ahead
Meditations
A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions: (Adapted from “Sacred Space”, a service of the Irish Jesuits) In the Eucharist, we deepen our relationship with Jesus, not mechanically, but by becoming more and more like him over the years. We meet God in this mysterious and dramatic way: God gives himself to us, and we try to shape our lives into a loving gift for God. In heaven there will be no Eucharist as we know it, because our bonding with God will then be complete.
So I ask myself:
How am I fostering my relationship with Jesus?
Have I become more like him? What do I need to let go of or what do I need to do to be more like Jesus?
Do I consider my life a loving gift for God? What can I change about my life that makes the gift of this life of mine more truly loving?
A Medidation in the Augustinian Style/Memory: (From Father Paul O”Reilly, S.J.) "I am the living bread that has come down from heaven." I think I know how John the Baptist must have felt when everywhere he went people kept asking him "Are you Elijah – come back from the dead?". Everywhere I went in Guyana, people always used to ask me: "Are you related to Bryan O'Reilly?" To which I had to respond: "only as brothers in the Lord". It seemed to disappoint them hugely. Even so, it was a great joy to be able to report to Bryan the great love and affection that people in Guyana still felt for him after his many years of service to them as a Jesuit missionary priest. Fame may be a passing bubble, but love is not. After he retired from the Missions (at the age of 82) he went to work in our parish of "Corpus Christi", Bournemouth in England. For the patronal feast of his parish he wrote a short poem for his parish newsletter, expressing something of what it means to him to have served the Eucharist all his life. Believing it worthy of a wider audience, his superior sent it out to our Province Newsletter. And, believing it worthy of a still wider audience I am sharing it with you here.
{For the best effect, take it somewhere quiet on your own and say it slowly and aloud.}
Corpus Christi
All absolutely empty.
Feelings have gone.
I gaze upon the crucifix.
And strive to ponder on the Eucharist.
Thoughts move along to the view
my window of the church of Corpus Christi.
The garden, the bushes and the trees
A strange vision will appear at times
As I hear the chimes, and these
Remind me of so many things.
Our Lady sings in the breeze
That blows across the garden and the trees
And I listen to a voice that speaks most clearly
"This is my Body – This is the cup of my Blood."
A flood of memories pour into my mind.
The very fabric of my being.
And now I am seeing bright clear
The vision that is mine here – at Corpus Christi.
No one will ever understand – why should they?
Contrition – Compassion – Wish-filled yearning – explains it all.
I hear the call "Come Lord Jesus – come".
A meditation in the Ignatian style/Imagination: Read Matthew 14:13-21 (The first story of the feeding of the four thousand). Imagine the scene in which the people follow Jesus to a "lonely place" and then are stranded without food. Try to place yourself in the story as one of the disciples. At which point do you become concerned enough about all these people that you speak to Jesus? What concerns you? That he crowd will become restless and angry, that it might turn on Jesus and as disciples you might get caught in the middle? Are you afraid that some will fall ill? Are you afraid that some will take food from others? How do you respond when Jesus tells you to handle the problem? What does this story reveal about my attitudes of scarcity vs. abundance? What Eucharistic overtones do you read into this story? What does this say to you about Eucharist and the world? What does this story say to you about bread (real bread) for the world and our obligation to provide it?
A Meditation in the Franciscan Style/Action: (This excerpt is from Justice Notes for Corpus Christi from the Southern Dominican Province in 2007 and is still relevant today) "Whoever eats this bread will live forever." (John 6:51) Each of today's readings speaks of being fed and they lead us to think about the growing crisis of world hunger. "Rising food prices are fueling the global hunger crisis. It is taking an immense toll on the world's poorest people, who typically spend up to 80 percent of their income on food. As many as 100 million more poor people could be made worse off by this burgeoning hunger crisis. After 30 years of progress against hunger and poverty, that is a setback that the United States and the rest of the world cannot afford to let happen." http://www.bread.org/learn/rising-food-prices.html "The prayer which we repeat at every Mass: "Give us this day our daily bread," obliges us to do everything possible, in cooperation with international, state and private institutions to end or at least reduce the scandal of hunger and malnutrition afflicting so many millions of people in our world, especially in developing countries." (Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict XVI, 2007) Did you know:
854 million people across the world are hungry, up from 852 million a year ago
Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes—one child every five seconds.
35.1 million people in the US—including 12.4 million children—live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors reports that in 2006 requests for emergency food assistance increased an average of 7 percent. The study also found that 48 percent of those requesting emergency food assistance were members of families with children and that 37 percent of adults requesting such assistance were employed.
What can you do? Pick a concrete action. Do it.
Poetic Reflections
Enjoy this lovely act of faith so movingly expressed by Mary Oliver.
The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist
Something has happened
to the bread
and the wine.
They have been blessed.
What now?
The body leans forward
to receive the gift
from the priest’s hand,
then the chalice.
They are something else now
from what they were
before this began.
I want
to see Jesus
maybe in the clouds
or on the shore,
just walking,
beautiful man
and clearly
someone else
besides.
On the hard days
I ask myself
if I ever will.
Also there are times
my body whispers to me
that I have.
This poem is just as appropriate for Corpus Christi as it is for Pentecost and for Holy Thursday. Enjoy.
Gather the People
What return can we make
for all the Lord has done in our lives?
We bring bread, wine, our clay dishes
and our clay feet
to this altar
and we pray that we may here
make a beginning—
that somehow in our days
we can begin to see the promises
the Lord has made us.
The promises do not always
glow with obvious light, or
overwhelm us by their obvious truth.
No matter what anyone says,
it is difficult to understand an invisible God
and belief is not always
the easy way out.
So we gather the people
and we tell the story again
and we break the bread
and in the memory of the one
who saves us,
we eat and drink
and we pray and we believe.
We gather, we pray, we eat.
These things are for human beings.
God has no need of them.
Yet he himself gathered the people,
prayed, broke bread
and gave it to his friends.
And so the invisible God became
visible
and lives with us.
—by Ed Ingebretzen, Psalms of the Still Country
