June 7, 2026
Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ
Lectionary: 167
First Reading: Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a
Moses said to the people:
“Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God,
has directed all your journeying in the desert,
so as to test you by affliction
and find out whether or not it was your intention
to keep his commandments.
He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger,
and then fed you with manna,
a food unknown to you and your fathers,
in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live,
but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.
“Do not forget the LORD, your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
that place of slavery;
who guided you through the vast and terrible desert
with its saraph serpents and scorpions,
its parched and waterless ground;
who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock
and fed you in the desert with manna,
a food unknown to your fathers.”
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20
R. (12) Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
Glorify the LORD, O Jerusalem;
praise your God, O Zion.
For he has strengthened the bars of your gates;
he has blessed your children within you.
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
He has granted peace in your borders;
with the best of wheat he fills you.
He sends forth his command to the earth;
swiftly runs his word!
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
He has proclaimed his word to Jacob,
his statutes and his ordinances to Israel.
He has not done thus for any other nation;
his ordinances he has not made known to them. Alleluia.
R. Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 10:16-17
Brothers and sisters:
The cup of blessing that we bless,
is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?
The bread that we break,
is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
Because the loaf of bread is one,
we, though many, are one body,
for we all partake of the one loaf.
Sequence — Lauda Sion
Laud, O Zion, your salvation,
Laud with hymns of exultation,
Christ, your king and shepherd true:
Bring him all the praise you know,
He is more than you bestow.
Never can you reach his due.
Special theme for glad thanksgiving
Is the quick’ning and the living
Bread today before you set:
From his hands of old partaken,
As we know, by faith unshaken,
Where the Twelve at supper met.
Full and clear ring out your chanting,
Joy nor sweetest grace be wanting,
From your heart let praises burst:
For today the feast is holden,
When the institution olden
Of that supper was rehearsed.
Here the new law’s new oblation,
By the new king’s revelation,
Ends the form of ancient rite:
Now the new the old effaces,
Truth away the shadow chases,
Light dispels the gloom of night.
What he did at supper seated,
Christ ordained to be repeated,
His memorial ne’er to cease:
And his rule for guidance taking,
Bread and wine we hallow, making
Thus our sacrifice of peace.
This the truth each Christian learns,
Bread into his flesh he turns,
To his precious blood the wine:
Sight has fail’d, nor thought conceives,
But a dauntless faith believes,
Resting on a pow’r divine.
Here beneath these signs are hidden
Priceless things to sense forbidden;
Signs, not things are all we see:
Blood is poured and flesh is broken,
Yet in either wondrous token
Christ entire we know to be.
Whoso of this food partakes,
Does not rend the Lord nor breaks;
Christ is whole to all that taste:
Thousands are, as one, receivers,
One, as thousands of believers,
Eats of him who cannot waste.
Bad and good the feast are sharing,
Of what divers dooms preparing,
Endless death, or endless life.
Life to these, to those damnation,
See how like participation
Is with unlike issues rife.
When the sacrament is broken,
Doubt not, but believe ’tis spoken,
That each sever’d outward token
doth the very whole contain.
Nought the precious gift divides,
Breaking but the sign betides
Jesus still the same abides,
still unbroken does remain.
(The shorter form of the sequence begins here.)
Lo! the angel’s food is given
To the pilgrim who has striven;
see the children’s bread from heaven,
which on dogs may not be spent.
Truth the ancient types fulfilling,
Isaac bound, a victim willing,
Paschal lamb, its lifeblood spilling,
manna to the fathers sent.
Very bread, good shepherd, tend us,
Jesu, of your love befriend us,
You refresh us, you defend us,
Your eternal goodness send us
In the land of life to see.
You who all things can and know,
Who on earth such food bestow,
Grant us with your saints, though lowest,
Where the heav’nly feast you show,
Fellow heirs and guests to be. Amen. Alleluia.
Alleluia: John 6:51
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven, says the Lord;
whoever eats this bread will live forever.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel: John 6:51-58
Jesus said to the Jewish crowds:
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world.”
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Jesus said to them,
“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.
For my flesh is true food,
and my blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me
and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on me
will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread will live forever.”
Reflection
Like Easter Sunday, which is the birth of the Church by the Coming of the Holy Spirit, this Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ or Corpus Christi is also a feast of Holy Mother Church because it celebrates the Church’s constitution as the mystical Body of Christ (Ep 4: 11, 15 & 5:23: “…Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior”).
Among man’s “bond and connection” with God, nothing could be more graphically rich than the image of being a member of the Body of Christ—which is the Church of Jesus, the Catholic Church. Christ is the Head of the Church and the Church is His Body and therefore, all those who enter the Church are bonded to God forever. This bond leaves an indelible mark upon those who enter the Church through baptism. However, a person marked with God’s seal may still lose his salvation through voluntary and willful rejection.
Side Note: There are several reasons why we say “Amen” when we receive the sacred host, either at Mass or whenever it is offered to us like in hospitals run by Catholic religious groups. One of them is the fact that we declaratively and openly confirm that we are indeed members of the mystical Body of Christ and that the Jesus is our Lord and Savior.
At Mass, the consecrated host is lifted up during the consecration and the epiclesis, not only for the whole congregation to see the host but for Jesus, who is truly present in the sacred host and who is one with His mystical body (which is the Church) is offered up and presented to His God and Father who wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of truth (see 1 Timothy 2:4).
Please note that every Mass is a thanksgiving celebration of the Church to the Father through Jesus Christ, who incidentally and intentionally is both eternal high priest and victim. Today, we celebrate the Church’s constitution as the Body of Jesus and we the faithful are once again invited to ponder upon this dogma which says that we have become the mystical body of Jesus, our Lord and Savior, because such was already intended even before time only and through God’s mercy that we become so.
Jesus didn’t need a mystical body because even before all creation, He was already God and was God who existed in simple perfection—without beginning and without end. By being incarnate, Jesus became true man and true God and the bridge to reconcile God with man by elevating the latter to the status of children in His mystical body. Jesus made this possible because it was the only means for mankind’s salvation. Jesus became flesh so that he could build His Church and give away His life to make the Church live forever. Our oneness with Jesus starts with our entry into the Church through our baptism and our stay is sustained by the Eucharist. Both baptism and the Eucharist are sacraments dispensed in the Church that Jesus built and nowhere else.
With these premises, we can view here that the Church is a sacrament by itself and the means of mankind’s salvation because of its oneness with Christ. The Church is the congregation of the baptized who are both called to come inside and sent to go into the world and spread the Gospel. We are the Church and therefore we are the Body of Christ. Please take a little moment to reflect on this truth.
The Mystical Body of Christ – The Church
In his Letter to the Ephesians, Saint Paul clearly establishes the spousal relationship between Christ and his Church. This spousal relationship results in a mystical union where Christ is the head of his body which is the Church. In fact, the mystical union of Jesus and his bride is unmistakable when St. Paul puts forth this dogmatic principle in the backdrop of enjoining wives to subject themselves to the authority of their husbands, akin to the subordination of the Church to the head who is Jesus. St. Paul said:
Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands. (Ephesians 5:22-24)
Therefore, all those baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit become children of God because Christ himself built and married the Church.
The Church is the Bride which Jesus will present to the Father in Heaven at the end of time (Rev 21: 9-26). We were created by God and destined us to be children of his kingdom. However, we become his children by adoption because of our membership in the Church. Saint Paul confirms this by saying: “He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved” (Ephesians 5: 5-6).
This does not mean that the adoption bestowed upon us is subordinate or with inferior rights. Remember, God’s Kingdom existed merely as a consequence of His act of creating the Angels and human beings. There is no kingdom to talk about if there are no subjects or in this case, no children to constitute as heirs. Therefore, the Kingdom of God or Christ’s mystical body was never required until the Angels and human beings came to be. God’s existence is perfect and simple. He had no need to create angels and man. But because he did, His Kingdom of priests, of royal blood due to the cleansing blood of the Lamb, became necessary. It is in this context that we who are of His Kingdom should be so grateful to be part of.
It also proves that God can only beget God. This is the reason why in the Nicene Creed, we say: “God from God, light from light, true God from true God. Begotten, not made; consubstantial with the Father.” The rules of human childbirth do not and cannot apply to God and it is when we try to analyze matters of the divine using human standards that we get confused.
We are mere human beings created by God. But with baptism, we are elevated to children of God. God can only beget God, as human beings can only beget humans. Therefore, without our entry into the Church through baptism, we remain mere creatures. Because of our baptism, we have become children of God by adoption because Jesus and the Church have been mystically united. In other words, baptized Christians are married to Christ. And because we have become children of God, we too have become heirs of His kingdom like Jesus, the Angels and Saints in Heaven.
The Bread of Life: “…not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3, also in John 6:22-59).
Allow us to start this by saying that Jesus is both the Word of God and the Bread of Life. In the Mass, we first listen to the Word of God to prepare ourselves to receive the Bread of Life in the Eucharist during communion. In other words, we first listen to Jesus so that we can have the proper disposition to receive Jesus in the Eucharist.
Therefore, salvation and holiness in our lives must be all about absorbing, imbibing and living out every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD, which includes the command uttered at the Last Supper: “Take and eat, this is my body; take and drink, this is the cup of the Covenant in my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.”
The words of our Lord in today’s Gospel, about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, cannot get any clearer than this: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” (John 6:54-55).
And in today’s Second Reading, St. Paul points to the reality that when we eat His flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, it is a communion of the Body of Christ because all who partake of the bread and drink from the cup are linked as brethren to brethren, through Jesus who is the Bread we all partake. From a spousal relationship necessarily came the expansion into a family communion because of the Eucharist. This is how significant the Mystical Body of Christ is and our incorporation into it means salvation, holiness and life as God wants it to be.
Gospel
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” (John 6:51)
What do we normally do with bread?
This is not a trick question. The answer, of course, is we eat it. In rare case, breads are photographed for ads. Stale bread even gets recycled into a different product like bread pudding, salads and other dishes.
As to why Jesus chose bread to be associated with His flesh that we should eat is something only He knows. It is probably the familiarity and availability of it as a staple of many cultures and countries that our Lord decided as He did.
The declaration is clear: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven…” Jesus is the living bread and His address is Heaven. If He says He’s the living bread, then he can be eaten or more accurately, he’s setting us up for a scenario that will eventually lead to the Last Supper and the Eucharist: “Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body which is given for you.”
Then, the invitation: “whoever eats this bread will live forever”. Here, Jesus makes it an invitation to eat him, which must have sounded odd and cannibalistic to the people who heard it. But at the Last Supper, the invitation turns into a command to eat His flesh in the appearance of unleavened bread which was transformed into His flesh, because He has the power to do so and will it.
Then comes: “the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world”. His flesh is the life of the world. Now, the invitation travels along the linear path of eating His flesh which results in everlasting life. His incarnation was meant for His Mystical Body as the sustaining life for those who believe that He is indeed the Bread of Life, which was meant to be broken, blessed, shared and eaten, so that the union between Jesus and His Church could be real and forever.
The Mystical Body was purposefully willed by God because of His undying, unlimited and unconditional love for those He created in His own image and likeness – angels and human beings. Because of this, St. Paul said: “He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will…” (Ephesians 1:5). Let us always be thankful that we are part of Jesus’ Mystical Body.
Second Reading: “We are what we eat.”
There is a saying: “We are what we eat.” This may very well be applicable in reflecting on today’s feast of Corpus Christi because, as members of God’s family and the Body of Christ, we are called to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ. This is the very reason why we are Catholics – we eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist; this is what differentiates us from the two other major monotheistic religions namely Islam and Judaism, and the other polytheistic religions and faiths.
In the Eucharist, Christ is truly present in the transubstantiated bread and wine which, after consecration by the priest, has become the body and blood of Jesus. Partaking of the bread and wine means that we are one with our Lord and the entire Church. It is a communion of the Body of Christ because what we partake to Christ himself. To eat Christ is to be one with Him because He sealed the Covenant with His blood.
The Body of Christ & The Bread of Life: A Postscript
We reiterate that it is our baptism that incorporates us into the Body of Christ, thereby making us royal citizens of Heaven and heirs of the Kingdom. Saint Paul says: “As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.” “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1Corinthians 12:20 & 27). To be baptized does carry with it lifetime consequences. Therefore, to be baptized in the “right” church is important.
In the First Reading, God “purposely” starved the Israelites in the Sinai desert to test their resolve – whether or not they will stay faithful to Him even in want and deprivation of two (2) very basic human needs – food and water. When they experienced hunger, they didn’t hesitate to complain to God, instead of humbly begging for his mercy. God satisfied their complaining by sending ‘manna’ or the bread from heaven, as a foreshadowing of the arrival of the Bread of Life in the New Testament, all in fulfillment of the promised salvation in Jesus the Christ. The test was supposed to humble them to always seek God’s mercy and long for the ‘bread that comes from heaven’. Sadly, they failed the test like a spoiled, privileged and entitled child. There was still “too much Egypt” in the hearts of the Israelites.
Remember that Corpus Christi, which is the Church and the individuals that make up the Church via baptism and the Eucharist might be different words with different meanings and significance, and may even appear as different concepts. But they are actually one and the same, like a man and woman are one in marriage, which is what the Mass and Eucharist are about.
When Jesus built his Church through Peter, he became one with it by virtue of a real marital union. In other words, Jesus became one with us, with you and me. St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 5: 23, reveals Christ spousal and covenantal relationship with his Church: “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.”
A blessed Corpus Christi Sunday to everyone.
– Gospel reflection by Kuya Rommel Cecilio of SLRP Bible Apostolate Ministry