Corpus Christi Sunday (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, June 18, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for Corpus Christi Sunday, Year C, Vigil
June 18, 2022

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday as we celebrate together the feast of the Holy Eucharist, his Body and Blood.
• In the Gospel for this year, the Church has us meditate on the multiplication of the five loaves and two fish to feed the crowd of about 5,000. There are a few reasons why the Church wants us to ponder this miracle on Corpus Christi. First, it happened immediately before Jesus’ Bread of Life Discourse, as Jesus used it to lead us to hunger not for food that perishes but the food that leads to eternal life, the True Manna, his own flesh and blood. Second, because of the verbs we encounter, when St. Luke tells us that Jesus took the bread and fish into his hands, looked up to heaven, blessed and broke them and gave them to his disciples, gestures and words that are identical to what happened in the Upper Room when he transformed bread and wine into himself. Third, many great saints have looked at the miracle of loaves and fish as foreshadowings, respectively, of the multiplication of the Eucharist, represented by the bread, and of believers, represented by the fish caught by fishers of men.
• Despite all of these connections, what I would like to ponder, however, is the great contrast between the miracle of the loaves and fish and the miracle of the Eucharist. In this Sunday’s Gospel, after the Twelve approach Jesus to encourage him to dismiss the crowd so that they could go to the surrounding villages and farms to get provisions, Jesus told them, “Give them some food yourselves.” Even though they could only scrouge up five small buns and two fish, which would have been inadequate to feed the apostles not to mention several thousand, Jesus wanted to incorporate their meager offerings into the miracle, much like in the Eucharist, he does seek to incorporate our efforts, starting not with grains and grapes but with bread and wine, which are not only the fruit of the earth and vine but the work of human hands. But whereas the apostles could actually give the crowds something themselves, however meager, in the Holy Eucharist there was no way the apostles directly could give the crowds the spiritual nourishment they needed even more. Jesus alone could do that. And one year after the miracle of the multiplication, during the next Passover, Jesus took bread and wine into his hands in the Upper Room, totally changed them into his Body and Blood, and said not just, “Take and eat, this is my body,” and “Take and drink, this is the chalice of my blood,” but also, “Do this in memory of me.” Rather than starting with the raw materials of fish and bread the apostles brought him to multiply, Jesus began the miracle himself and then gave the apostles the command, though the Sacrament of Holy Orders, to multiply his Body and Blood, bringing it to feed the crowds throughout time until the ends of the earth. With regard to the spiritual nourishment we need, Jesus doesn’t say, “Give them some food yourselves,” but rather, “This is my Body,” “This is my Blood,” and “Give them this food!”
• On Corpus Christi, we focus on this tremendous self-gift of Jesus and what our response should be. In St. Thomas Aquinas’ famous Lauda Sion Salvatorem that the Church proclaims as a Sequence before the Gospel, he tells us what the only fitting response must be. “Quantum potes, tantum aude,” he writes, literally, “Whatever you can do, so much dare,” before noting that reality of the gift of the Eucharistic Jesus far exceeds the capacity of all human praise and action.
• This spirit of “daring to do all we can,” while it is meant to characterize our approach to the Eucharistic Jesus in general and to the celebration of Corpus Christi in particular, should mark in a special way the attitude of Catholics toward the US Bishops’ three-year Eucharistic Revival initiative, which starts this Sunday and will last three years. This is the biggest Eucharistic initiative in the history of the Church in the United States. In the first year, there will be diocesan events for clergy, faithful, students. The second year will focus on helping every parish to become truly Eucharistic and boldly do all it can. The third year will be national, featuring the first national Eucharistic Congress in almost 50 years, when the Bishops hope 100,000 or more will come to Indianapolis July 17-21, 2024 to celebrate this gift and commit themselves to being Eucharistic missionaries, taking their knowledge and love of the Eucharistic Lord out to fallen away Catholics in their parishes and families, to our Protestant brothers and sisters and to others. But the most important dimension is not diocesan, parochial or national. It’s personal. The bishops hope that each of us will commit to grow our Eucharistic faith, amazement, love and life.
• The reason why the US Bishops have established this initiative is in response to a crisis in Eucharistic faith and life. Only one out of five Catholics in the United States comes to Mass each Sunday and far fewer attend Holy Days of Obligation. Several recent surveys have shown that only three of ten Catholics, and only half of those who attend Mass each Sunday, believe what the Church boldly professes about the Eucharist: that the Eucharist actually and astonishingly is Jesus — his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity — under the appearances of bread and wine; that after the words of consecration, God himself is really, truly and substantially present on our altars, in our tabernacles and within us who receive him. And since, as the Second Vatican Council famously described, the celebration of the Eucharist is the source, summit, root and center of Catholic faith and life, if Catholics’ Eucharistic faith and practice are weak, then all of Catholic life is enfeebled. Hence the urgency and importance of the Eucharistic Revival.
• And so I’d like to get practical about ways we’re called to live this Eucharistic Revival.
• The first is with regard to the Mass, so that we may get more out of it by putting more love into it. The Revival is a chance for us to prepare better for Mass and stoke our desire, knowing that in Mass, we enter in time into the eternal actions of Jesus in the Upper Room, on Calvary and from the empty tomb. The more we yearn for Jesus, the more we hunger for the food that endures to eternal life that he gives us through his priests, the more we will try to make our whole life Eucharistic, not just coming to Mass on Sunday and Holy Days when we have to, but even during the week, simply out of love. We can likewise focus during this revival on whether we truly pray the Mass or simply attend, whether we mean the words we say, whether we listen to Jesus’ words as words to be done. We can focus on lovingly adoring Jesus before we receive him, on the thanksgiving we give for the unbelievable gift of Jesus, and on whether we leave transformed so as to transform the world in a Eucharistic key by giving our own body, our blood, our sweat, our tears, everything we are and have out of love for God and for others.
• The second practical way to live this Eucharistic revival is through Eucharistic adoration, spending time before the Eucharistic Jesus in personal prayer and worship. Pope Francis likes to say that Eucharistic adoration, his favorite form of prayer, crushes our idols and helps us to grow stronger in our faith in Jesus Christ, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, with us in the Holy Eucharist. To those who don’t believe in Jesus’ Real Presence in the Eucharist, Eucharistic adoration is foolish, almost, as some heretics blasphemously call it, “cookie worship.” But if we take Jesus’ words seriously when he says “This is my Body,” “This is the chalice of my Blood,” “My body is true food and my blood is true drink,” and “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,” then when we come before Jesus in worship we grow in Eucharistic faith as well as become more like Him whom we adore. If we really believe that the Eucharist is Jesus and we love him, then we will want to spend more time with him. Jesus said to St. Margaret Mary that he had had so loved us that he exhausted himself in testimony of his love, but from most he received in response only indifference, irreverence, coldness, sacrilege and scorn toward him in what he called “the sacrament of love,” namely, the Eucharist. What we ought to give Jesus is exactly opposite: instead of indifference, we should make him in the Eucharist the biggest difference in our life; instead of irreverence we should bathe him with reverence and piety; instead of coldness, passion; instead of sacrilege, holy souls, purified in confession; instead of scorn, the greatest praise and thanks we can muster. Eucharistic adoration helps us to do just that.
• The third way I’ll mention is by taking Jesus in the Eucharist out to the world. On Corpus Christi, many of us will participate in processions, in which the priest will place the Eucharistic Jesus in a monstrance and carry him around our parish or into the local neighborhoods. That’s a beautiful testimony to our Catholic faith and love. While Eucharistic adoration helps us to grow in our Eucharist discipleship, Eucharistic processions help us to grow in our Eucharistic apostolate, courageously and contagiously sharing our faith in the Eucharist with others. The awesome reality, however, is that when we receive Jesus within in Holy Communion, we in fact become monstrances sent out to the world to bring Jesus to others, much like the Blessed Mother, after she conceived Jesus within her in the Annunciation by the power of the Holy Spirit, went with haste to bring Jesus growing inside of her to St. Elizabeth and John the Baptist. What a privilege it is to take Jesus inside of us to others! What an opportunity to show others the difference Jesus in the Eucharist makes in our life! The way we respond to Jesus in the Eucharist should be greater than the way any of us respond to the most effective medicines. We know taking two Advil will alleviate our headache or two Tums our heartburn. How much more should the Eucharist change us!
• As we prepare to celebrate Corpus Christi and begin the Eucharistic revival, we thank the Lord Jesus for the incredible love he has shown us in humbly giving himself as our spiritual nourishment. He accounted nothing else worthy of our souls. And we ask him for the grace to dare to do all we can in response to that self gift, by the way we prioritize him in the Eucharist, coming to receive him with love in Holy Communion, spending time with him in adoration, and seeking to bring him to others and others to him. Happy Feast!

The Gospel text on which the homily was based was: 

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