Omelie per le Famiglie - Corpo e Sangue di Cristo - "Chi mangia di me vivrà per me" - 07/06/26

www.chiesadomestica.org From the Gospel according to John Jn 6:51-58 Jesus said to the crowd: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." Then the Jews began to argue among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven; not as your fathers ate the bread and are dead. Whoever eats this bread will live forever." Word of the Lord. ___________________________________________ Dearly beloved, Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, a feast established by Pope Urban IV in 1264 to commemorate the Eucharistic Miracle of Bolsena that occurred a year earlier in 1263. As you may know, the miracle consisted in the fact that, to answer the doubts of faith of a Bohemian priest passing by during the celebration of Mass, that the Body and Blood of Christ were not actually present in the Eucharist, drops of blood flowed from the newly consecrated host, wetting the corporal—the small white cloth on which the chalice and host rest—and the large altar cloth, which are preserved in the Cathedral of Orvieto, built specifically to house these relics. The Pope entrusted St. Thomas Aquinas with the composition of the liturgical texts for this Feast, in which we celebrate the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the consecrated Bread and Wine at Mass, as Christ himself told us in today's Gospel, calling himself the "Bread come down from Heaven" and affirming that "his body is true food and his blood is true drink," so that "whoever eats me will live because of me." The Eucharist is, in fact, the way the Lord invented to remain present in us throughout our life's journey. Thus, it forever nourishes, week by week—or, if we wish, day by day—our hunger for love and thereby enables us to love God and our brothers and sisters "without ever giving up." Rather, through our faithfulness in love, we progressively transform ourselves into Him. As St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us in his reflections on the Eucharistic Mystery, while when we nourish ourselves with physical food, it is the food we consume that transforms into our bodies, transforms into ourselves, nourishing ourselves with faith in the Eucharistic food has the opposite effect. It is Christ who, by becoming our food, progressively transforms us into Him, enabling us, too, to satisfy, with our love, the hunger for love of those around us, thus becoming ever more like Him. This is the true Eucharistic Miracle that occurs every time we celebrate the Eucharist with faith and which we remember on this Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. Our progressive transformation into real, tangible images of that Christ truly present in the Eucharist that we receive with faith. Truly, "whoever eats me will live because of me"! Hugs Gf