The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a; Psalm 147; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58

         In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus tells us that he is the bread of life, and that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will have eternal life, be raised from the dead, and abide in Jesus and Jesus in them. 

         The reason Jesus gives is that “my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” (John 6:55) A word-for-word literal translation of this verse is “for flesh of me true (alethes, ἀληθής) is food and the blood of me true (alethes, ἀληθής) is drink”.^[1] The Greek word for true, alethes, means “as it accords with fact (reality).”^[2]

         This word indicates, comments Pitre, that Jesus “is emphasizing the realism” of the Sacrament of the Eucharist.^[3] Quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Pitre underlines the reality of the Eucharist: “In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist ‘the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity…. 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”. (CCC 1374) 

         In really offering himself in the Eucharist to us, Jesus wants an exchange to occur where “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” (John 6:56) This exchange, writes Pitre, effects a “mystical union” with Jesus. ^[4]

         Venerable Archbishop Sheen distinguishes eating the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the risen Jesus in the Eucharist from all other kinds of physical eating with the “law of transformation” by which what is lower is transformed into the higher.

The law of transformation works consistently throughout the whole order of nature and supernature. The lower transforms itself into the higher. The plant transforms itself into the animal when taken into it as food, but man is transformed by grace and love into Christ when he takes Christ into his soul as food, for it is the quality of love to transform itself into the object loved.

In explaining what this transformation into Christ means, Sheen continues:

 Christ comes in me to vivify me and to transform my activities so that I love what He loves, I hate what He hates, I will what He wills, His interests become my interests; His affections become my affections; His desires become my desires. In this sense, I can cry out with Paul: “I live, no, not I, but Christ liveth in me.” And though my activities are transformed, my bodily appearance, my address, and my exterior, my name and my occupation remain unchanged. The appearance still remains, but down deep in my soul, a wonderful change has taken place: I have given way to Christ.^[5]

May God Bless You – Father Peter

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^[1] “John 6,” biblehub.com, https://biblehub.com/interlinear/john/6.htm.

^[2] “227. aléthés,” biblehub.com, https://biblehub.com/greek/227.htm.

^[3] Brant Pitre, “The Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B),” catholicproductions.com.

^[4] Brant Pitre, “The Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B),” catholicproductions.com.

^[5] Fulton J. Sheen, The Life All Living: The Philosophy of Life (New York: The Century Co., 1929), 107-108.