Sunday, 07 June 2026 – The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi), Solemnity, Year A
First Reading: Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 10:16-17
Gospel: John 6:51-58
Full text on USCCB: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/060726.cfm
We are people who forget God, in plenty because we feel we need no one, and in hardship because fear shrinks the world down to what frightens us. Christ did not say think of Me but Do this in memory of Me, and He gave us a meal on a table to hold the remembrance our feelings cannot. Come and receive, even on the weeks you feel nothing, because remembrance is not just a thought you think but very much a thing you do.
There was once a king who woke to the worst news of his life. Three armies had joined against him, and they were already marching. He had every reason to panic, to summon his generals, count his soldiers, and rely on what he could control. Instead, Jehoshaphat stood before his people and said a beautifully vulnerable thing, as we hear in the Second Book of Chronicles: “We have no power against this. We do not know what to do. But our eyes are upon You” (2 Chronicles 20:12).
Then he did something extraordinary. When the army marched out the next morning, he did not put the soldiers in front. He put the choir there, who sang, “Give thanks to the Lord, for His mercy endures forever,” (v. 21). Praise and thanksgiving went out ahead of the battle.
The King’s faith was much more than a warm feeling in his chest. It was a physical act. He turned his fear into remembrance before he had any proof it would work.
This is the heart of what we celebrate today, on this Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi, with readings that speak of manna in the desert, the one bread that makes us one body, and the living bread come down from heaven.
On the night before He died, Jesus took bread, and He did not say, “Think of Me.” He said, “Do this in memory of Me” (Luke 22:19). Do it. Remembrance, in the language of God, was never just something we manage in our heads. It is also something we perform with our hands and our feet.
God knows why He made it that way. In our first reading, Moses warns the people right before they enter the Promised Land. His great fear is not that they will rebel. It is that they will forget.
Moses was right. We are people who forget, and we forget in two directions. When life is full and comfortable, we forget God because we feel we do not need Him. When life is hard, we forget Him just as fast, because fear shrinks the world down to the size of our problem, and God falls right out of the frame. That is why the wise man in the book of Proverbs prayed: “Give me neither poverty nor riches. Give me only my daily bread. Just enough to keep me Yours” (Proverbs 30:8-9).
Here is the profound mercy of God. He did not leave our remembering to our moods, because He knows our moods cannot carry it. So He gives us a meal. He gives us Himself, His Body, His Blood, His living presence under the humble signs of bread and wine. The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is the surest cure we have for that forgetting, the one none of us escapes.
And this is what Jesus promises in today’s Gospel: “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me” (John 6:56). Remains. Our feelings come and go. Our memories fade. But He keeps that bond alive in us, if we will only step forward and do this one true thing.
I want to pause and tell you what I see from up here. You are people who remember. When someone you love is sick, you call for the priest. For the weddings, the anniversaries, the answered prayers, you come and have the Mass offered. You show up at this table. It gives me great hope for our parish, and I thank you. You have inspired me more than you know.
But forgetting God is not usually one great failure. It is a slow tide, going out so quietly you never feel the water leave. The most faithful heart can drift. That is why Jesus gave us a table to return to, again and again, the God who fed Israel with manna now feeding us with the living bread from heaven.
So come on the weeks you feel nothing, and on the weeks you feel you need nothing. Come when you are frightened and the world has shrunk to one worry, and come when you are full and sure and God seems beside the point. When prayer is dry or pride is high, come anyway. Open your hands anyway. When you hear the words “The Body of Christ,” say your Amen and mean it, even when you feel nothing, even when you feel you need nothing, because that small, physical yes is faith in one of its purest forms. Remembrance is not a thought you think. It is a thing you do. So come, and let us Do this in memory of Him. And as we do, the One we remember is not absent. He is here, giving Himself to us as the Bread of Life.
Amen.