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. // John 6:53-54
Hey, remember Holy Thursday? It was two months ago, and—if your family is anything like mine—it was a busy day in a busy week. It’s easy for the significance of Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist on that night at the Last Supper to be overshadowed by all of the other important events of the day, to say nothing of the rest of Holy Week and the Triduum. In my family, Holy Thursday is the busiest day of the entire liturgical calendar. (And for us that’s saying a lot!)
Saint Thomas Aquinas must have felt similarly because in 1264, he convinced Pope Urban IV to institute the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, also known as Corpus Christi. Aquinas also wrote the beautiful sequence, “Lauda Sion,” that we hear during the Mass today.
Without being tied up in the sorrows of Christ’s Passion and death, on the Feast of Corpus Christi we can better rejoice in the extraordinary gift of the Eucharist. Jesus is truly with us and truly present in every tabernacle in every Catholic church in the world. Christ has given to us his body to eat and his blood to drink. It’s humbling and . . . unsettling, right? Jesus’ followers thought the same thing.
Just after the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel, many of His disciples abandoned Him, calling it a “hard saying” (John 6:60).
How can we make it easier? How can we “practice” belief in the Real Presence? Hopefully your parish offers a Eucharistic Procession for the solemnity today! A procession is a profound witness to our love for Jesus in the Eucharist. (And how cool is a processional umbrella?!) Spending time in Eucharistic Adoration is another, of course. Two simple habits that have helped me are (1) Staying for a few minutes after Mass, kneeling before the tabernacle to thank Jesus for staying here with us, and (2) Making the Sign of the Cross whenever I walk or drive past a Catholic church. Both are easy reminders of a hard—but beautiful—truth.
P.S. It’s a great time to start! The United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is in the midst of a multi-year push for National Eucharistic Revival. See their dedicated website for details on how individuals and parishes can get involved. Consider attending the United States’ first National Eucharistic Congress in 83 years (!). It will be held in Indianapolis in 2024.
Kendra Tierney Norton is grateful to be a wife, mother, and stepmother. She lives in the wilds of unincorporated Los Angeles County in a big old fixer-upper house with her husband and a varying number of their combined fourteen children, plus one fish, two cats, and twenty chickens. She likes to say that her goal is keeping Catholicism weird. To that end, she is the author of books including the Catholic All Year Compendium: Liturgical Living for Real Life with Ignatius Press and O Come, Emmanuel: Advent Reflections on the Jesse Tree for Families with Emmaus Road Publishing, the creator of the TV series Catholic All Year At Home on FORMED, and the CEO of Catholic All Year, an apostolate dedicated to helping parents live out their Catholic faith and pass it along to their children.
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