Homily for Corpus Christi Sunday, June 11, 2023. Gospel of St. John 6: 51-58. Theme: What You See Isn’t Always What You Get!
Today’s Feast of Corpus Christi marks the beginning of the National Eucharistic Revival on the parish level. It invites us as the Catholic community of St. Sebastian to deepen our faith in one of the most challenging of all the Bible’s teachings: that the bread and wine at Mass are miraculously changed, really and truly, into the Body and Blood of Christ! If this sounds incredible and borderline ridiculous to some of you then you’re not alone. As we heard in today’s Gospel, many of those who heard Jesus teach about it reacted in the same way saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
It was just too much to accept. And we are told at the end of this story (which for some reason isn’t included in today’s Gospel) that these perplexed disciples walked away from Christ. And He let them walk away instead of saying that He had been misunderstood. Because you see, the problem wasn’t that He had been misunderstood. They clearly and correctly heard what Jesus was saying. The problem was that they did not yet fully understand who He was nor what He was able to do. But Peter and others did not walk away. Not that they totally got it, not that they understood the how or the why of it…but they knew Jesus. They had witnessed His miracles and trusted Him. And here we are 2,000 years later, just like them. We don't understand it either, but we stay with Jesus because we trust Him and we believe.
However, they are still disciples today like the ones in our Gospel story who find it hard to believe that Jesus gives us His flesh as true food and His blood as true drink. They celebrate the Lord’s Supper in their worship services, some of which even look very much like a Mass, but they believe that the Eucharist is simply specially blessed bread and wine or a reminder of the Lord’s spiritual presence. And you know quite honestly, I’ve never understood why such Christians who have no problem accepting that Christ truly became a man would find it so very difficult to believe that the Eucharist truly becomes Christ. I mean to me these two things are really quite the same.
In both cases our senses don’t pick up the full story. In both cases it’s a matter of “what you see, isn’t what you get!” What I mean is that when people encountered Jesus of Nazareth, what did they see? What did their senses tell them? What they saw was an ordinary looking man from a rural village. He dressed like them, He spoke like them. He ate like them. He smelled like them. And He worked like them. But they were not able to discern the full truth that was staring them in the face! Because right in front of them, hidden by the appearances of flesh and bone, stood the eternal Son of God. However, they couldn’t identify divinity because it’s a spiritual reality that’s beyond the grasp of our material senses.
And the same is true for us when we come before Jesus in the Eucharist. The full reality of Who is actually before us is hidden by the outward appearances of bread and wine. And so, we must rely upon faith, which means trusting in Jesus’ word, and look beyond what our senses tell us in order to arrive at the truth. We must look beyond the appearance of the Consecrated Bread held up before our eyes and remember that Jesus said, “This is my Body given for you.” We must look beyond the Consecrated Wine in the chalice and remember the words of Christ at the Last Supper: “This is my Blood, poured out for you.”
But you know, every so often throughout history God confirms our faith by miraculously changing the appearances of the Consecrated Bread and Wine to reflect what they have really become. There have been over 130 documented miracles affirming that what we worship in the Liturgy, what we receive in Holy Communion and what we adore in the Blessed Sacrament is truly Christ the Lord. But no one needs to take just my word for it. Anyone can go online where you can learn all about these Eucharistic miracles. Today, however, I would like to mention just two of them: the very first documented case and a more recent one.
The first took place in Lanciano, Italy around the year 750 AD. A priest was having persistent doubts about the Real Presence of Jesus in Holy Communion. During the words of consecration at Mass one day, the host he was holding literally turned into flesh right in his hands and the wine in the chalice was transformed into thick drops of blood. In 1971, Pope St. Paul VI permitted scientific studies to be carried out on them, and it was discovered that the Host was flesh from the heart of a male and the chalice contained human blood type AB. Two years later the W.H.O. carried out 500 tests on these same specimens. Their results confirmed that not only was the Consecrated Host human flesh, but even though 1200 years had passed, it tested as if it had been freshly biopsied from a living human being! The scientists issued a statement that declared, “Our tests have come to a halt because we are face to face with the impossibility of giving an explanation.”
Jumping ahead to the 20th century, a Consecrated Host also turned into bloody flesh in Buenos Aires in 1996. The archbishop at that time, who is today Pope Francis, sent it under strict guard to a highly respected research center in New York. The lab staff were not told what it was nor where it came from. The man in charge of the study was Dr. Frederic Zugibe, a world-famous cardiologist and forensic pathologist. His findings revealed the specimen to be a slice of male heart tissue with the blood type of AB, just like the flesh and blood of Lanciano. But an even more astounding and inexplicable fact was discovered. When the Host-turned-flesh was put under a microscope, Dr. Zugibe said that the cells were moving, pulsating, and beating like a normal living human heart! He declared it to be utterly impossible and a phenomenon totally beyond the capability of science to explain.
Imagine that…the Consecrated Host was somehow living flesh! Amazing! For me, this really brings new meaning to the words of Jesus that our cantor just sang at the Alleluia, “I am the Living Bread that came down from heaven!” The Living Bread, not that of a dead and long-gone Savior. I think we can better see now why God chose to have the tangible aspects of the Eucharist – what we see and touch and taste - remain bread and wine even though the reality has changed. For who of us would receive Holy Communion if it looked and tasted for what it actually is?
But Jesus didn’t give us the Eucharist just so we could adore and worship Him. He never operated out of such self-concern. No, Christ gave Himself to us in this way so that He could change us from the inside out. And if we don’t change over time, it’s not on the Eucharist, but it’s on us. We don't change because we don’t have hearts truly open to being transformed. Maybe we’ve taken the Eucharist for granted and developed a habit of receiving Holy Communion as a matter of routine. Perhaps we each need to ask ourselves: What are my interior motives for going to Communion? What’s happening in my heart? Do I prepare to receive Jesus in the Eucharist? Do I come to him expecting Christ to do great things in my life when I receive him? When was the last time I made a really good confession to clear out the spiritual clutter that may be getting in the way of allowing Jesus to change me?
Jesus wants to change us. He loves us so much that He comes to live within us in this great Sacrament of Love. He gives himself completely to us. In return, do we give ourselves completely to Him? When we receive Him do we say, “Jesus, thank you for coming to me. Jesus, I need you. Jesus, I love you. Jesus, please change me; change my heart.” On this feast of Corpus Christi, let’s allow Jesus to touch our heart deeply and definitively and say to Him, “Lord, I want for me what you want for me. Increase my love and trust in You!”
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