Pope Francis leads Benediction outside the Basilica of St Mary Major on the feast of Corpus Christi in Rome. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
First Reading Dt 8:2-3,14-16
Moses said to the people:
“Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God,
has directed all your journeying in the desert,
so as to test you by affliction
and find out whether or not it was your intention
to keep his commandments.
He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger,
and then fed you with manna,
a food unknown to you and your fathers,
in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live,
but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.
“Do not forget the LORD, your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
that place of slavery;
who guided you through the vast and terrible desert
with its saraph serpents and scorpions,
its parched and waterless ground;
who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock
and fed you in the desert with manna,
a food unknown to your fathers.”
Responsorial Psalm 147:12-15,19-20
O Praise the Lord, Jerusalem
Glorify the LORD, O Jerusalem;
praise your God, O Zion.
For he has strengthened the bars of your gates;
he has blessed your children within you.
He has granted peace in your borders;
with the best of wheat he fills you.
He sends forth his command to the earth;
swiftly runs his word!
He has proclaimed his word to Jacob,
his statutes and his ordinances to Israel.
He has not done thus for any other nation;
his ordinances he has not made known to them. Alleluia.
Second Reading 1 Cor 10:16-17
Brothers and sisters:
The cup of blessing that we bless,
is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?
The bread that we break,
is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
Because the loaf of bread is one,
we, though many, are one body,
for we all partake of the one loaf.
Gospel Jn 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.”
Reflection
It is a providential opportunity for us to reflect on the meaning of this feast for us, at a time when we still cannot welcome the whole local community to celebrate the Eucharist.
One of the graces of this time could be to remind us of what it is that we most hunger and thirst for. Moses reminds them that God did more than see to their physical needs. To live we need more than bread and water. We need to experience communion with God. Perhaps we have come to realize this more as we have been deprived of the Eucharist. What we thirst for most is to be in communion with God. We need to hear God speaking to us. We need to know that we are loved by God.
Reflecting on this, Saint Augustine came to a deeper understanding of the nature of sin. His early training led him to think of sin as passion overwhelming reason. It is refusal to accept that we are creatures and that everything we are and everything we have is gift. We are on a journey to the Promised Land. We need bread. We need water. And we need to welcome them from God. We sin when we act as though we can determine what is best for us without accepting God’s guidance, without listening to ‘every word that comes from the mouth of God’.
This is what Jesus said so often. We must change and become like little children who know that they are not meant to be self-reliant. They simply and joyfully look to their parents for care and protection. Of course, we are not children, and we have to learn to grow up and to be responsible; but we should never forget that we are dependent upon God and we should learn to delight in this dependence.
The feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ highlights this dependence. At the Eucharist we express our need and come to God to receive his most precious gift.
He is offering us his ‘flesh’: his weakness, his vulnerability, his acceptance of the human condition with its pains and disappointments, but also with its utter dependence on the Spirit of God.
At times like this when we cannot freely join others at the Eucharist, Jesus is still welcoming us to come to him and to join him in opening the hearts of others to believe and their arms to love. To eat his flesh and to drink his blood is to receive his offering of himself and to give ourselves to others. Everyone is hungering for ‘eternal life’.
Fr Michael Fallon msc
