The Food the Lord Himself Wondrously Gives, Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord (C), June 19, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Year C
June 19, 2022
Gen 14:18-20, Ps 110, 1 Cor 11:23-26, Lk 9:11-17

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In the Gospel for the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord this year, the Church has us meditate on the miracle of 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, since it happened immediately before Jesus’ Bread of Life Discourse, Jesus used it to teach us about his Body and Blood in the Eucharist and lead us to hunger not for food that perishes but the food that leads to eternal life. Second, the connection between the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish and the miracle of the Eucharist to which it points is seen in the sequence of 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, throughout the centuries 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 we can focus on today, however, is the great contrast between the miracle of the loaves and fish and the miracle of the Eucharist. After the Twelve approach Jesus to encourage him to dismiss the crowd so that the multitude could go to the surrounding villages and farms to get provisions, Jesus told them, “Give them some food yourselves.” 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, but Jesus wanted to incorporate their meager offerings into the miracle, much like in the Eucharist, he starts 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!”
• What Jesus did is the fulfillment of what Melchizedek did in the first reading. Melchizedek brought out bread and wine to offer to God. Christ, a priest forever in the line of Melchizedek as we prayed in the Psalm, took bread and wine into his hands in the Upper Room but gave the apostles — and through them, their successors and priestly collaborators, us — far more. He changed them into his Body and Blood and said, as St. Paul reminds us, “This is my body that is for you” and “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” On this Father’s Day in the United States, when we give God thanks for the gift of our fathers and pray for them, living and dead, we also thank Jesus for his fatherhood, as the image of the fatherhood of God the Father. To be a father is to give life and it’s in the sacraments that Jesus gives us his very zoe, the supernatural life by which our souls live and thrive. He came so that we might have life and have it to the full and he seeks to bring us toward that perfection of life through the Eucharist, telling us, “Just as the Father who has life sent me and I have life because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will have life because of me!” On this Father’s Day we have even greater reason to celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi through which we receive Jesus’ fatherly life and care!
• The mystery of what Jesus does for us in the Holy Eucharist should fill us with great wonder and gratitude. In response to the Lord’s self-gift in the Holy Eucharist, the Church has us make our own Saint Thomas Aquinas’ praise in the Lauda Sion Salvatorem sequence we pray each Corpus Christi immediately the Gospel. “Praise, O Zion, your Savior, Praise your King and Shepherd in hymns and canticles. However much you can, so much dare to do, because no praise is enough for what is greater than all praise.” 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 today 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, religious, faithful, students and more. 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 Eucharistic Congress in the United States in almost 50 years, when the Bishops hope 100,000 or more will come to Indianapolis July 17-21, 2024 to celebrate this gift of gifts. There they hope those in attendance and all those participating virtually will 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. I have been appointed by the US Bishops one of 56 National Eucharistic Preachers to try to catalyze these noble efforts geared to helping us believe, celebrate, live and share what we profess to believe about Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. The most important dimension of the Revival, however, 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 and to share that 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 in our country, one that is seen, likewise, in many other countries in the world. In the United States, 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 memorably 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.
• We know how central Jesus in the Holy Eucharist was in the life of Saint Teresa of Calcutta and wanted to be in the life of every Missionary of Charity. When she composed the first Constitution for the future Missionaries of Charity back in 1946-47, she wrote, “The Sisters should use every means to learn and increase that tender love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.” She asked the Archbishop, “One thing I request of you, Your Grace, is to give us all the spiritual help we need. If we have our Lord in the midst of us, with daily Mass and Holy Communion, I fear nothing for the Sisters nor myself; he will look after us. But without him I cannot be — I am helpless.” She told others regularly, “If I can give you any advice, I beg you to get closer to the Eucharist, to Jesus.” She encouraged Catholics in the United States to spend more time with Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, promising, “Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration with exposition needs a great push. People ask me: ‘What will convert America and save the world?’ My answer is prayer. What we need is for every parish to come before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in holy hours of prayer.” She added from the Church’s faith and her personal experience, “The time you spend with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the best time that you will spend on earth. Each moment that you spend with Jesus will deepen your union with Him and make your soul everlastingly more glorious and beautiful in heaven, and will help bring about an everlasting peace on earth.” She encouraged everyone to make their lives truly Eucharistic. “Just as Jesus allows himself to be broken, to be given to us as food, we too must break, we must share with each other, with our own people first, in our house, in our communities, for love begins at home.” She compared the work of the Missionaries of Charity to that of our Lady in the Annunciation and the Visitation, when she brought Jesus within her to Zechariah, Elizabeth and John. “Every Holy Communion fills us with Jesus and we must, with Our Lady, go in haste to give him to others. For her, it was on her first Holy Communion day that Jesus came into her life, and so for all of us also. He made himself the Bread of Life so that we, too, like Mary, become full of Jesus. We too, like her, be in haste to give him to others. We too, like her, serve others.” Everything was summarized by the prayer she prayed after Mass and you still pray, in which you beg Jesus, “Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that my life may only be a radiance of yours. Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel your Presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me, but only [you!].” This is something that is meant to grow. She wrote, “These desires to satiate the longings of Our Lord for souls of the poor — for pure victims of his love — goes on increasing with every Mass and Holy Communion.” This Eucharistic Revival is an opportunity for it to grow so that the whole Church in the US may learn to stay with Jesus and begin to shine as He shines and so to be a light to others.
• And so let’s get practical about ways we’re called to live this Eucharistic Revival, by focusing on three specific ways.
• 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 the days we have to and because we have to, but coming simply out of love each day. 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 is by taking Jesus in the Eucharist out to the world. On Corpus Christi, many of us participate in Eucharistic processions, which are 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 — as Saint Teresa of Calcutta mentioned — 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 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, to receive him with love in Holy Communion, spend time with him in adoration, and seek to bring him to others and others to him. Let us celebrate this Mass, as St. Teresa of Calcutta asked and put in every sacristy, as if it were our first Mass, our last Mass and our only Mass! O res mirabilis! Poor and humble servants now prepare to eat the Lord!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download