Homily: Solemnity of Corpus Christi
June 7, 2026
My dear brothers and sisters, we celebrate today the solemnity of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. The solemnity we celebrate today offers us another opportunity to pause a while and reflect on the mystery that Christ left for us in the Holy Eucharist. It is a mystery that is very deep, some of our brothers and sisters who through sincere devotion understood and lived this mystery, we can see that their statements about the Holy Eucharist always had much depth. Sr Faustina Kowalska of the divine mercy for instance said, “all the good that is in me is due to Holy Communion. I owe everything to it. I feel this holy fire has transformed me completely.” The saint of our time, the patron saint of the internet, saint Carlo Acutis said: “the Holy Eucharist is my highway to heaven.”
We completed our parish retreat two days ago. The theme was, “heaven on earth: encountering Christ in the Holy Eucharist,” it was a moment of grace filled reflections on the Holy Eucharist. Among many other things, we are reminded that the Holy Eucharist is a meal, it is a sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, it is a holy communion, it incorporates the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. As a spiritual meal, we can give an imperfect example with physical meal. We usually treat our friends and cherished guests with special meals, in such moments friendship and love are renewed. In a little similar way, in the Eucharistic meal, friendship and love with God and all other God’s children are renewed and kept alive. When we eat ordinary bread, it is assimilated by our bodies and becomes part of us, our own bodies. It was the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach who said that “man is what he eats.” Jesus says in the gospel, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” It is the person of Jesus that must be eaten, it is His person that must be assimilated, it is His existence that must become ours. This assimilation and transformation cannot happen magically, for their to be this change, we need to receive the Eucharist with interior and exterior preparation, we need to receive it with faith and sincere devotion.
The Holy Eucharist is a sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ. At Mass, we reenact Jesus’ sacrifice at the cross of Calvary. Sometimes when we watch the movies of the passion of Jesus at Calvary, we tend to wish that if there is a way God will rewind the hands of the clock back that there may be a repeat of the Calvary events so that we will defend Jesus with all our might. May be like the good thief such that in the end we will tell Jesus to remember of us in paradise. The truth is that a repeat of that holy sacrifice happens daily in our parishes during the Holy Eucharistic celebration. Jesus said: “do this in the memory of me.” Let us identify with the sacrifice of Jesus by drawing close to the Eucharistic Jesus.
The Holy Eucharist embodies the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, that is Jesus as the only Son of God who became Man to save us. In 2 Kings 5, when Naaman of Syria came to Elijah for the prophet to cure his leprosy. Elijah sent a messenger to tell him to go and bath at river Jordan seven times. On hearing this Naaman left in rage. Naaman expected Elijah to come and manifest extraordinary show of signs and miracles. However, his servants called him in order, “if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it, but all he said is wash and be clean.” Naaman listened to his servants’ advice and went and dipped himself in river Jordan seven times and he became healed; his skin became flesh like that of a baby. If God had required that in order for us to behold the divinity of Jesus, we need to sail to the middle of AtlanticOcean or fly to the moon, some of us would save money for years to achieve it, but no, all He wanted is for us to draw close to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist very close to us. The topic of our just concluded retreat was ‘heaven on earth,’ that is, in the Eucharist, heaven is brought close to our door here on earth.
As we celebrate this solemnity of Corpus Christi, may always remember that the Eucharist is Holy Communion. We cannot commune with God and our brothers and sisters at the altar and when we leave the Church the communion ceases. The Holy Eucharist continuously challenges us to think of practical ways we can forever live in love and commune as God’s family here on earth.
