Sunday Reflections, Corpus Christi, Year A. 7 June 2026

Institution of the Eucharist

Blessed Fra Angelico [Web Gallery of Art]

The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread (1 Corinthians 10:16-17; Second Reading). 

Corpus Christi Sunday, Year A

The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Year A 

In most countries this solemnity, formerly celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, is now observed on the Sunday after Trinity Sunday, this year replacing the Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. 

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand)

Readings (English Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, Scotland, India)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA) 

Gospel John 6:51-58 (English Standard Version, Anglicised)

At that time: Jesus said to the Jews, ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’

 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’

 So 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 feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on 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 whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live for ever.’

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

 

  

Pope Benedict XVI, Zagreb, Croatia, 2011

[Wikipedia; photo]

John and Pam are a couple who live in the parish of the Assumption, Howth, in the Archdiocese of Dublin whom I have come to know very well through Worldwide Marriage Encounter since I came back to Ireland from the Philippines nine years ago. John was seriously ill in hospital three years ago and shared some reflections with me in emails which I thought would be good to share on Sunday Reflections with his permission for the feast of Corpus Christi. He has kindly given me permission to use his reflection again this year. Please pray for Stephen, the sone of John and Pam who is recovering from serious surgery.

From a small swelling below my left knee I developed sepsis and suffered septic shock late at night in which my vital signs: heartbeat, pulse, disappeared. My guardian angel must have been watching over me because Pam, my beloved of 53 years [now 56], was sitting beside me and her nursing training acquired 60 years ago, sprang into action as she gave me the kiss of life and applied CPR. 

Fortunately, Pam’s action was successful. I came to and the ambulance brought me to Beaumont Hospital where I received extraordinary care from a dedicated team for 3½ weeks as they worked to bring the infection under control, which has been a slow business. Thankfully I have now been discharged and continue to recover at home under Pam’s dedicated care.

It has been a time for reflection. Our wonderful parish community - the Body of Christ - has been praying for me as has our faithful Marriage Encounter family.

53 years ago, Pam and I vowed to live as one body as Jesus called us in Matrimony to do. Now Pam, who is an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion in our parish, has been bringing me the Body of Christ, broken for us on the Cross and risen to Easter glory, to receive in my hospital bed and now at home. It has been extraordinarily profound for both of us. St Paul links the various meanings of ‘body’ together.

I have to assume that the Lord still has some task for me that I may neither know nor understand at this moment.

I was pretty poorly in hospital and had some dark nights of the soul, unable to sleep and wondering if I would ever really recover. However there were always others more ill than me in the ward.

As expected, we’ve had extraordinary love and prayers from our Marriage Encounter Family. One couple, Mike and Rose, have kindly been keeping everyone up-to-date on my faltering progress.

However what has been perhaps less expected has been the outpouring of love and prayers from our daily 10:00 Mass community in our parish church in Howth that I join every day via the webcam. I have had a real tangible experience of belonging to a community who truly love me and Pam. It has been an alive experience that St Luke describes so vividly in Acts referring to the early Christian communities. Both Pam and I feel humbled by it all and this outpouring of love, prayer and support has so buoyed me up especially through the darker moments.

The idea of Body is a strong theme running through St Paul’s letters. There is Jesus offering his Body broken on the Cross to be gloriously raised on Easter Day. Jesus himself tells us [in today’s gospel] that unless we eat his Body and drink his Blood we shall not have his life in us. He it was who raised marriage to be a Sacrament by calling Pam and me and countless others to live as One Body.

Paul develops this by identifying the Christian Community as Christ’s Body with the members looking out for other members. We have experienced this in huge and tangible measure pressed down and over-flowing. 

Pam and I are Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion and if asked, we stand in the middle of the church and it has often occurred to me that we as a married couple called to be one body by Jesus, are serving his Body to the Body of Christ in our parish. This became a deep thought in my present illness, watching Pam receive the pyx with the Blessed Sacrament in it at the end of Mass to bring the Lord to me on my sick bed.

Love (III)

By George Herbert

Read by Ben W Smith

Supper at Emmaus (1606)

Caravaggio [Web Gallery of Art]

Traditional Latin Mass

Second Sunday After Pentecost

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 06-07-2026 if necessary).

Epistle: 1 John 3:13-18. Gospel: Luke 14:16-24.

St John the Evangelist

Bernardo Cavallino [Web Gallery of Art]

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren (I John 3:16; Epistle). 

                                                                      

Two young Eucharistic saints. Sunday Reflections, Corpus Christi, Year C

 

Blessed Carlo Acutis

3 May 1991 - 12 October 2006

Beatified 10 October 2020; to be canonized 7 September 2025

[Wikipedia; photo]

In the countries where this blog is read the Solemnity of Corpus Christi is celebrated on Sunday 22 June rather than on Thursday 19 June, the Thursday after Trinity Sunday being the traditional day.

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan,)

Readings (English Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, India, Scotland) 

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Luke 9:11-17 (English Standard Version, Anglicised)

At that time: Jesus spoke to the crowd of the kingdom of God and cured those who needed healing. Now the day began to wear away, and the Twelve came and said to him, ‘Send the crowd away to go into the surrounding villages and countryside to find lodging and get provisions, for we are here in a desolate place.’ But he said to them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said, ‘We have no more than five loaves and two fish — unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.’ For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, ‘Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each.’ And they did so, and made them all sit down. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing over them. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. And they all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

                     

Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati

6 April 1901 - 4 July 1925

Beatified 20 May 1990; to be canonized 7 September 2025

[Wikipedia; photo]

I've told the story here before of a German woman I met in Canada in 1997. I was visiting Irish friends and through them was invited to give a talk to a prayer group. After the talk I was having coffee with the woman who had gone to Canada from Germany in her younger days. She was a Lutheran then. For a long time she had been thinking of becoming a Catholic but could not take the final step. One weekday afternoon she felt unsettled about this and went for a walk. She happened to be passing a Catholic church and went in to pray. While she was there, a group of teenage boys, around the same age as Blessed Carlo Acutis above who died aged 15, who came into the church went up to the front, genuflected before the Blessed Sacrament, knelt down and prayed silently for a few minutes. Then they got up, genuflected again and went out.

That was the moment of grace for the woman that led her to decide to become a Catholic. God spoke to her through a group of teenage boys whom she didn't know and who, quite possibly, hadn't even noticed her.

Blessed Carlo and Blessed Pier Giorgio had many things in common, though they were born 90 years apart. Both were Italian, though Carlo was born in England but grew up in Italy. Both grew up in affluent families but their parents were not particularly devout Catholics. Yet both from their childhood had a sense of God's love for them and an awareness of the poor whom they helped from their pocket-money and from befriending them. They also developed a life of prayer centred on the Holy Eucharist. Carlo from his young days would visit the Blessed Sacrament on his way to and from school and befriend beggars he met on the way.

Pier Giorgio sometimes spent the whole night in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament during his university days.

Both Pier Giorgio and Carlo brought persons much older than themselves to know Jesus Christ. The story of Carlo's influence on Rajesh Mohur, a Hindu immigrant from Mauritius to Italy, is inspiring. And Carlo was somewhat of a 'geek' when it came to the internet, developing sites devoted to Eucharistic miracles and apparitions of Our Lady. 

Both Pier Giorgio and Carlo died within days of a very painful serious illness being diagnosed, In Pier Giorgio's case polio, which he probably got from a poor woman whom he had been visiting, and in Carlo's case leukaemia.

These two young men truly believed in the presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, body, blood, soul and divinity. They took to heart the words of Jesus in today's Communion Antiphon: Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him (John 6:37). So did the teenage boys in Canada whose quiet faith led the German woman to the Catholic Church and faith in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, the reality that today's feast celebrates.

There is a wealth of material online about these two young men on. The video below is one I have watched a number of times. Each time it has uplifted me and drawn me into prayer.

Carlo Acutis Web Missionary (Original version with subtitles)

Traditional Latin Mass

Second Sunday after Pentecost

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 06-22-2025 if necessary).

Epistle: 1 John 3:13-18. Gospel: Luke 14:16-24.

Christ in Agony on the Cross

El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren (1 John 3:16; Epistle).

Mass in the trenches in the First World War. Sunday Reflections, Corpus Christi, Year B

 

St Margaret Mary Alacoque Contemplating the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Corrado Giaquinto [Web Gallery of ArtWeb Gallery of Art]

June is the month of the

Sacred Heart of Jesus

He guides the humble in the right path; 

He teaches his way to the poor (Ps 24[25]:9).

 

Supper at Emmaus

Caravaggio [Web Gallery of Art]

Corpus Christi, Year B

The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Year B 

In most countries  this solemnity, formerly celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, is now celebrated on the Sunday after Trinity Sunday, this year replacing the Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time. In communities where the Traditional Latin Mass is celebrated Corpus Christi is observed on the traditional day, the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, this year 30 May.

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Mark 14:12-16, 22-26 (English Standard Version, Anglicised)

And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to Jesus, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him,  and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.” And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

British Army Trench, First World War

The Somme, France, July 1916

Photo by Ernest Brooks [Wikipedia]

Alfred O'Rahilly in his Father William Doyle SJ, a biography of an Irish Jesuit who served as a chaplain in the British army in the First World War and who was killed on 16-17 August 1917, writes on page 474 about a Mass celebrated in the trenches. Normally he was not allowed to have Mass with the men there because of the danger. 

On February 2nd [1917], however, he was able to offer the Holy Sacrifice in the trenches , his chapel being a dug-out capable of holding ten or a dozen. 'But my congregation numbered forty-six,' he says, 'the vacant space was small. How they all managed to squeeze in I cannot say. There was no question of kneeling down; the men simply stood silently and reverently round the little improvised altar of ammunition boxes, "glad," as one of them quaintly expressed it, "to have a say in it." Surely our Lord must have been glad also, for every one of the forty-six received Holy Communion, and went back to his post happy at heart and strengthened to face the hardships of these days and nights of cold.' What a difference the Real Presence made in the ministrations of a Catholic chaplain!

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, No 1374 states: The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend." In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained." "This presence is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be 'real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present."

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, popularly known by the Latin name Corpus Christi, celebrates this reality, the same reality that Fr Willie Doyle and the 46 soldiers celebrated in the trenches in Flanders, Belgium, on that cold Candlemas Day in 1917.

Pope Benedict XVI celebrating Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament

Tantum ergo, sung at Benediction, consists of the last two stanzas of Pange lingua, the Latin hymn written by St Thomas Aquinas for the feast of Corpus Christi and sung at Vespers (Evening Prayer) on the evening before the feast and on the feast itself.

Tantum ergo sacraméntum
Venerémur cérnui:
Et antíquum documéntum
Novo cedat rítui:
Præstet fides suppleméntum
Sénsuum deféctui.

Genitóri, Genitóque
Laus et jubilátio,
Salus, honor, virtus quoque
Sit et benedíctio:
Procedénti ab utróque
Compar sit laudátio.
Amen. Alleluia.

Down in adoration falling,
Lo, the sacred Host we hail,
Lo, o'er ancient forms departing
Newer rites of grace prevail:
Faith for all defects supplying,
When the feeble senses fail.

To the Everlasting Father
And the Son who comes on high
With the Holy Ghost proceeding
Forth from each eternally,
Be salvation, honor, blessing,
Might and endless majesty.
Amen. Alleluia.

Holy Communion at Wedding Mass

[Wikipedia; photo]

Traditional Latin Mass  

Thursday after Trinity Sunday, Feast of Corpus Christi

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 06-02-2024 if necessary).

Epistle: 1 Corinthians 11:23-29.  Gospel: John 6:56-59.

Last Supper

Rubens [Web Gallery of Art]

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him (John 6:56; Gospel).

Second Sunday after Pentecost 

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 05-30-2024 if necessary).

Epistle: 1 John 3:13-18.  Gospel: Luke 14:16-24.

St John the Evangelist

Bernardo Cavallino [Web Gallery of Art]

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren (1 John 3:16; Epistle).