08/06/2026
Fr Michael's homily from yesterday's Solemnity of Corpus Christi:
Eating these days can be a highly political and sensitive issue. With the rise of vegetarianism, veganism, arguments for/against food miles and net zero environmental policies, the food that we place in our shopping baskets or trolleys has become something of an ethical lottery. And then there are the labels: telling us how much we should eat daily, and how much sugar, salt, fats, and artificial additives are contained in some of our favourite foods. One hears of teaching assistants searching through pupils’ lunch boxes at school, lest they contain a trace of chocolate, cake, or something approaching a treat. Food has become too much of a guilt-trip, rather than an occasion to be thankful. But remember the words of the popular harvest hymn: “All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above; Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord for all His love”.
Thankfulness and love are at the heart of our celebration of Corpus Christi today. More correctly, it is the celebration of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, broken and shed for us on Mount Calvary, and given to us in this sacred meal which we call the Mass or the Eucharist. It is prefigured in our first reading, where God gives to His chosen people all manner of good things to sustain them in their desert wanderings, including the manna – the strange fluffy bread like substance – each day (apart from the sabbath). In the Christian context – and in our Gospel today – we hear Jesus interpreting the miracle of the loaves and fishes, telling the congregation that, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him”.
This sense of ‘abiding’ or ‘remaining’ in Christ is our ‘participation’ in the sacred meal of the altar, of which St Paul speaks in our second reading. This participation is the most base and common human experience: that of eating and drinking. In fact, the verb that is used by St John is not the polite use of the word ‘to eat’ – the way we were taught at home and school - but to gnaw, chew, or munch: emphasizing the physical and deliberate act of consuming food. This impolite verb form is used in Greek mythology, describing how animals chew grass and crunch vegetables. What on earth is going on here? Are we being urged to show an animalistic disrespect for the sacred species of the eucharist? Not at all. The early writings of the Church read this kind of eating as an emphasis on the reality of the food and drink of the eucharist: what we call the ‘Real Presence’ of Jesus, and not some merely spiritual experience. This is emphasised in the resurrection account of Jesus by the Sea of Galilee, where he prepared bread and fish, and eats with them. This emphasises His own physicality: echoing the shocking and base language of this sermon in the synagogue at Capernaum.
After the prayer of consecration we do not refer to ‘bread and wine’, but the ‘body and blood’ of Jesus. We believe that this ‘prayer of faith’ brings about a transformation in what is set before us during the Offertory prayers. The technical word for this is ‘transubstantiation’ – a change across state or substance. It is no longer common bread and wine, but the precious and sacramental body and blood of Jesus. The words of administration of giving the sacred ‘host’ are taken from the Anglican rite of Holy Communion, and a literal translation of the ancient Latin rite: “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, preserve [custodiat] thy body and soul unto everlasting life”. The eucharist does what Jesus taught in the synagogue at Capernaum, contained in our Gospel today: “he who eats this bread will live for ever”.
Jesus promised that he would be with us – ‘to the end of the age’. We have the great privilege of attending mass, and receiving Jesus in this special way. We should prepare for it well at home, as we come into church in our prayers (mass booklet), and if needed to make a particular Act of Confession, if we are in a state of grave sin. Pope Leo – in his weekly Wednesday audiences with the crowds in Rome – is reflecting back on a key document of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s: Sacrosanctum Concilium. This document was written to safeguard the beliefs that we hold in the mass, and to interpret for new generations of Catholics across the world. One of the most important phrases in this text is that the “the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time, it is the font from which all her power flows”.
What we ‘do’ in church today is the manner in which the love and power of God flow into our lives and the world. Without it we become weak and undernourished, like those who eat badly, and eventually fall sick. Let us be truly thankful for all that God gives us in creation, and in the life of faith, but on this day especially - for the gift of Himself in the sacramental gifts of His own body and blood.
