Gospel
Reflection
Corpus
Christi
22 June 2025, Church Year C
Reprinted
by permission of the “Arlington Catholic Herald”
Bread
and Wine
By Fr.
Jack Peterson
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On his
last night walking the streets of this broken world, Jesus
bestows the supreme gift of the Eucharist — the blessing of his
Divine Presence as the fulfillment of his promise to remain with
us until the end of time. It is common to save the best gift for
last. When masterminding this way of giving himself, Jesus could
not give us anything more spectacular.
Jesus’
choice of bread and wine to be the chosen symbols that would
veil the real presence of his precious Body and Blood was very
deliberate. Melchizedek, the great king and “priest of God Most
High,” made an offering to Abraham of bread and wine. Bread and
wine are central elements of the Passover meal that God
instructed the Hebrew people to celebrate every year in
remembrance of being set free from hundreds of years of slavery
to the Egyptians. Jesus transformed water into wine and
multiplied the loaves of bread during his public ministry. These
two events pointed to the Eucharist.
A good
number of Jesus’ followers were shocked when Jesus taught them
about this future gift during the Bread of Life discourse in
John’s Gospel. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (Jn
6:52) In fact, many turned away and no longer followed Jesus as
a result of this remarkable pledge to remain present to us in
the Eucharist and be a source of nourishment for our earthly
journey to the Father.
For
those who remained faithful to the Master, prayerful reflection
and trust in the truth and goodness of all that Jesus said and
did turn this initial shock to profound gratitude and belief in
this promised gift. Jesus is the Second Person of the Holy
Trinity, wonderfully one with the Father. Jesus is the eternal
Word of the Father. His Word is truth. So, when Jesus grasped
the hand of the deceased daughter of Jairus and commanded her to
rise, she stood up and began to eat. When Jesus said to the
sinful woman at the Pharisee’s home, “your sins are forgiven,”
she left reconciled with God through the mercy offered by our
precious Lord. When Jesus awoke in the boat that was being
tossed by the storm, he “rebuked the wind, and said to the sea,
‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was great
calm” (Mk 4:39). For those with faith in Christ, there is no
need to doubt his capacity or his will to transform bread into
his Body and wine into his Blood.
The
ancient sequence sung at Mass for today’s solemnity states most
poetically, “This the truth each Christian learns, Bread into
flesh he turns, To his precious blood the wine: Sight has
failed, nor thought conceives, But, a dauntless faith believes,
resting on a power divine.”
Finally,
I would like to note that the Eucharist is a gift of love. The
Lord had to go, and he wanted to stay. He had to go to the cross
and accomplish the will of the Father; and he wanted to stay and
remain with his beloved disciples. So, in his great wisdom and
love, Jesus conceived a way to do both. He fashioned a whole new
way to be united with his disciples. St. Luke makes note of a
very profound desire of Our Lord as he reclined at table with
them for the last time, “I have earnestly desired to eat this
Passover with you before I suffer” (Lk 22:15). This desire to be
with them and institute the sacrament of the Eucharist was the
fruit of his divine love. He saved his best gift for last. The
same sequence continues: “Very bread, good shepherd, tend us,
Jesu, of your love befriend us, you refresh us, you defend us,
your eternal goodness send us.”
I would
like to conclude with a brief reflection on the Eucharist by St.
Thomas Aquinas: “O precious and wonderful banquet that brings us
salvation and contains all sweetness! Could anything be of more
intrinsic value? Under the old law it was the flesh of calves
and goats that was offered, but here Christ himself, the true
God, is set before us as our food. What could be more wonderful
than this? No other sacrament has greater healing power; through
it sins are purged away, virtues are increased, and the soul is
enriched with an abundance of every spiritual gift. It is
offered in the Church for the living and the dead, so that what
was instituted for the salvation of all may be for the benefit
of all. Yet, in the end, no one can fully express the sweetness
of this sacrament, in which spiritual delight is tasted at its
very source, and in which we renew the memory of the surpassing
love for us which Christ revealed in his passion. It was to
impress the vastness of this love more firmly upon the hearts of
the faithful that our Lord instituted this sacrament at the Last
Supper.”