Texts taken from the “On Your Word” Missalette May-June 2023

Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Solemnity) (A)
Proper

FIRST READING

From the Book of Deuteronomy (Dt 8:2-3, 14b-16a)
Moses spoke to the people, saying: “Remember the whole journey along which the Lord, your God, has led you during these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He therefore humbled you, allowing you to feel hunger, then feeding you with manna, which you did not know and which your fathers had never known, in order to make you understand that man does not live on bread alone, but that man lives on everything that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Do not forget the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the condition of slavery; who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, a land of poisonous serpents and scorpions, a thirsty land without water; who brought water out for you from the hardest rock; who fed you in the wilderness with manna unknown to your fathers.” - The Word of the Lord.

Commentary on the First Reading

In this passage from Deuteronomy, Moses twice recalls to his listeners the miracle of the manna in the wilderness. No one can live in a great and terrible place populated by serpents and scorpions, where there is no way to obtain food and water. Manna is essential for the people to live and eventually reach the Promised Land. Manna is a perfect symbol for introducing the concept of the Eucharist: it comes from heaven as an unimaginable and freely given gift from God, nourishes the physical body, and enables us to reach our final destination. Without manna, one dies. Let us transfer this to the Christian and spiritual level: the Bread of life, that is, the Body of Christ, also comes from heaven, nourishes not the body but the soul, sustains and strengthens the soul so that man may overcome his passions, do good, and reach Paradise. Yes, because the soul is also hungry and must be nourished: without its “true food,” it languishes and dies. “Without Sunday we cannot live,” said the martyrs of Abitene during the Roman persecutions. And, to affirm this truth, they were ready to die.

SECOND READING

From the First Letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (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? And the bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. - The Word of the Lord.

Commentary on the Second Reading

The principle of unity among us Christians cannot be mutual sympathy or simply believing the same things, but is much deeper: it is eating the same Body of Christ together. Once grafted into the risen Christ, we are one body with him and also one body with all the others who have been nourished by the same Food. When we receive Holy Communion, we should feel great love for those who have attended Mass with us or who, in any case, are nourished by the Body of Christ. This power of love does not follow human criteria, but is given to us by the Lord from above, because his Body is wholly permeated by the love of the Father. If we do not feel this, let us not be discouraged, but first try to make this truth our own, to believe that we are one with the body that is the Church. Let us not judge or condemn, but rather love. In response to a Protestant who wrote to Erasmus of Rotterdam asking why he continued to remain in the Catholic Church, he replied: “I endure the Church because the Church endures me.”

GOSPEL OF THE DAY

From the Gospel according to John (Jn 6:51-58)
At that time, Jesus said to the crowd: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” Then the Jews began to argue sharply 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 whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. It is not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.” - The Word of the Lord.

Commentary on the Gospel of the Day

A Protestant from the recent past confessed that he had returned to the Catholic Church because he was struck by the phrase contained in today’s Gospel: “My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.” He had thought that the Body and Blood of Christ in the Catholic Mass were mere symbols, meaning that the bread was only bread and the wine remained ordinary wine even after the consecration. Yet these words tormented him: if Jesus said that his body is true food, how could he have deceived his disciples if everything were merely a symbol? And if the body is true food, then we must believe that without this food we can neither grow nor live spiritually. This man later became a great devotee of the Eucharist, and until his death he attended Mass every day because he had understood that true food is not material food, but that which nourishes the soul. There is also another meaning in the Eucharist: “Whoever eats me will live because of me.” We do not partake of the Lord in order to remain as we are, but to be transformed into him, enter the new world of the Spirit, live the divine life, experience the transfiguration of our instincts, and receive the power of love. All of this is the “Corpus Christi.”