Homily for Solemnity of Corpus Christi

Homily for the Solemnity of
Corpus Christi

June 7, 2026
John 6: 51-58
Deut 8: 2-3, 14-16
Villa Maria, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

“Jesus said, ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven’” (John 6: 51).

Jesus has been speaking at length to the people who’ve looked for him after he multiplied bread and fish to feed thousands of men and women.  They chased him down from across the Sea of Galilee to the synagog in Capernaum.

He speaks 1st of the nourishing power of his teaching (6:26-50).  Then he speaks of a more wonderful food, the “true food” and “true drink” of his own body and blood (6:55).

In their dialog with Jesus, the people had referred to the manna that God had provided for their ancestors when they wandered as nomads in the Sinai desert for 40 years.  When the Hebrews saw the manna for the 1st time, the book of Exodus tells us, they “asked one another, ‘What is this?’ for they didn’t know what it was” (16:15).  The manna appeared each morning, “fine flakes like hoarfrost on the ground,” according to Exodus (16:14).  It’s further described as “like coriander seed, but white, and it tasted like wafers made with honey” (16:31).  And “Moses told them, ‘This is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat’” (16:15).

The Hebrews gathering manna
(anon. painting, ca. 1460)

However tasty and nutritional, that manna wasn’t a live thing.  It sustained life for the day, and God provided it for years in the desert.  But, Jesus cautions his audience in the synagog, “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life” (6:27).  He points out, “your ancestors ate and still died” (John 6:58) during all those years.

They died because the manna was temporary and because, St. Paul reminded the Christians at Corinth, they ate without faith in God or in Moses (I, 10:1-11); they were constantly complaining and rebelling.  “Most of them failed to please God and their corpses littered the desert,” Paul writes (10:5).  The Letter of St. Jude warns, “I wish to remind you … that the Lord who once saved a people from the land of Egypt later destroyed those who did not believe” (v. 5)

Jesus offers living bread—living because it is “my flesh for the life of the world” (John 6:51).  Jesus is alive, his flesh and blood are alive, and they fill with his life “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood” (6:54), even unto eternal life, the life that Risen Jesus enjoys in heaven.

That’s why the Church celebrates the Eucharist every day and requires our participation in the Eucharist at least every Sunday, the day of the Lord’s resurrection.  That’s why we have this one extra-special celebration of the Lord’s body and blood, the feast of Corpus Christi.  Jesus wants us to have life for eternity, as he does, and in this sacrament he offers that to us:  truly not bread and wine but his living body and blood under the outward appearance of bread and wine, just as he said to the apostles at the Last Supper, “This is my body for you.  Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor 11:24).