Relax To Understand Corpus Cristi

The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi), June 7, 2026

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

    Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ — Corpus Christi.

    In the readings today, we hear how God fed His people in the desert. Through Moses, the Lord reminded Israel:

“Remember the journey the Lord your God led you on for forty years in the desert… He fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your ancestors, to teach you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

    God sustained His people physically and spiritually. In the desert, He gave them manna. But that manna was only a preparation for something greater.

    In the Gospel of Saint John, Jesus Himself declares clearly what Corpus Cristi is all about. He does not say this in symbolic terms; He isn't vague.

    He says firmly:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you will not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 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. It is not like the manna your ancestors ate and still died. Whoever eats this bread will live forever... amd I will raise him up on the last day”

    Today, on Corpus Christi, we celebrate this profound mystery, the third of Christs great mysteries*: the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist — His Body and His Blood.
* (The other mysteries are: The Resurrection and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost)    

    For weeks now, I have repeated a phrase attributed to Pope John Paul I:

“The mysteries of God were not made to be understood; they were made to be accepted.”

    And once again, today we encounter a mystery — the mystery of the Eucharist.

    Its rather weird when you step back and look - people eagerly jump to accept the Resurrection and the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentacost. But they become paralyzed trying to explain how bread becomes the Body of Christ and wine becomes His Blood. Because we are material beings, we love to confound ourselves with questions like:

“How can someone eat a body?” 
“How can someone drink blood?”
“How does bread become flesh, and wine become blood?”
"This is hoodoo - what's the science?" and so on.

    Children studying for their first communion are often told to look at their hands when this comes up.
"What is inside your hand ?" their teachers ask.
"Bones, and flesh, and blood," they answer.
"How do you know?
"...Well, we are told that by doctors in medicine..., so we just know." They are smart at that age, and they respect the word of respected authorities.
    So it goes with the Eucharist. There is no higher spiritual authority than God, who came to us through Jesus Christ. And CHRIST said, '...this is my body, this is my blood... If you don't consume it, then you have no life in you.'
HE said that.
    In fact, Jesus says it 7 times in unmistakably explicit language, and He intensifies the teaching rather than softening it when people object.
    This is significant, because when the crowd objects — “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” — Jesus does not back pedal and say, “Okay, well,...I meant that symbolically, so don't freak out.”

    No.
    Instead, He becomes even more emphatic about it.

    In the original Greek, Jesus shifts from a more general word for “eat,” (phago) to a much more graphic verb (trogo), which means to chew, gnaw, or consume. This makes His language more concrete, not less.

    Also important: many disciples left Him over this teaching.

The Gospel of John says:

“As a result of this, many of His disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied Him.”

....and what does Jesus do? He lets them walk away rather than changing His intent. He didn't give anyone a hall pass to claim that it was just a “misunderstanding,” or some vague, semantic symbolism.
- That is how sincere He was about, "eat and drink my flesh and blood...."
- That is how strongly He intended it to be received.
- That is his His Aposltes took it, and that is how they taught it. 
- And since The Church is not a Bible only church, but an apostolic one.... it still teaches it that way.
    
    Over time, The Church, came to call this mystery, transubstantiation, — a complex word that describes the change that occurs in the Eucharist. And it was neccessary to give it a name, because heretics had arisen who were saying:

• The Eucharist isn't truly Christ; it still looks, tastes, and feels like bread and wine

• Jesus is only symbolically present

• The bread isn't spiritually meaningful...

If you're anti-Catholic and reading this, that proabably sounds.

    Sometimes we spend so much energy trying to understand the mystery that we forget to live it. For others, since they can't understand it on their own terms – they throw it out. They ignore it. Or they look for ways to discredit it.

    These folks are like the Jews and disciples who left. They resist, and this becomes the basis of an odd paradox:
These same people will loudly claim they believe in the Bible's "authority," or in Jesus Christ – until they won't anymore.
    They want Jesus, but they're like those disciples who walked away – they can't handle Jesus when He gets real. So they end up seeing the Eucharist as some symbolic gesture.

    To answer this situation, theologians — especially in the Middle Ages — used philosophical language to express the Church’s ancient belief more precisely. This distinction came from philosophical categories associated with Aristotle, which some anti-Catholics today complain is not, "christian."

    But theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas, used such language to explain a mystery more carefully. After all, the Church isn't afraid of learning something that can help – wherever it comes from.
    So the Council of Lateran (1215 AD) did not invent a new belief, just to give anti-Catholics something to one day argue over. Rather, it coined a precise term to defend an old belief.

    The word transubstantiation comes from Latin:

• trans = “across” or “change”

• substantia = “substance” or underlying reality

    It means: The substance (what something truly is) changes, while the appearances remain the same.

    But that belief existed long before the word existed.
For example, Ignatius of Antioch (around A.D. 107) criticized those who: “....abstain from the Eucharist because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior.”
And Justin Martyr (around A.D. 155) wrote that the Eucharistic food is not ordinary bread and drink, but the flesh and blood of Christ.

    So, in simple terms, The Church developed the word “transubstantiation” not to side-step the mystery, but to safeguard the true meaning of the mystery from the merely human misunderstanding we've been talking about.
    It was a way of saying: “Yes, Christ is truly present. No, it is not merely symbolic. And yes, even though it still appears as bread and wine, something real has changed.”

    But perhaps the greater issue is not how it happens. Rather, what if we learned to relax and accept – and to live the mystery.
Because the important thing is what this spiritual nourishment produces within us, what it feels like and what it can do in our lives. It is the interior, spiritual life of the spiritual human person that is the focus...not some science experiement.
    So, The greater question is:

What happens in us when we receive Him in the Eucharist?

    The Eucharist is not merely something to explain — it is something to experience, to receive, and to allow its transformation in us. So if we were more attentive to our interior spiritual life, and not just trying to make ourselves feel good, perhaps we would ask a different question:

"What effect does the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist have on my life?"
"What effect CAN it have on my life?"

    Because for me, the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is just what He said it was: Life.

    When I receive Holy Communion, I experience peace.
I experience strength.
I experience His divine presence.
    And this is where many people miss the point...

The Eucharist is not magic.
Jesus in the Eucharist is not an amulet or a lucky charm.
Yet, there is something deeply transformative about His presence for those who experience it on the divine level.
    When something sacred truly matters to us, it changes us. It gives peace, confidence, and hope. That is what happens when we encounter Jesus in the Eucharist with faith.

The concern today should not simply be:

“How does Christ become present in this little cracker?”

But rather:

“What changes in me when Christ becomes present?”

To answer that you must allow the Eucharist to become what it truly is: Food that transforms the human soul.

    That's what Jesus said it was. When we focus only on debates about whether Christ is present, or how He becomes present, how long it lasts, etc., we are rejecting the divinity and we risk missing the deeper reality:

When Christ comes to us, He changes us.

    This is not the same as reading words in a book and telling yourself what you think they mean. This isn't waving your hands in the air, jumping around to a rock beat. This is not 'personal relationships,' or being, "good." 

    This is transformation – the kind that occurs only when we truly encounter Him, divinely.

    When someone feels loved, they change.
But when they do not feel loved, nothing changes.
We see this in ordinary life. People fall in love, and suddenly they become different. They change their priorities. They see life differently.

    So today I say to you:

Fall in love with Jesus, by falling in love with the Eucharist.

    Because if you do not fall in love with the Eucharist, Holy Communion risks becoming routine. You may attend Mass and never understand what is happening. Or, worse, you may talk yourself into thinking that it is just a suggestion - and you don't really need Him this way.
    But when you fall in love with Jesus in the Eucharist, everything changes.

You begin to see what others cannot see.
You begin to feel what others cannot feel.
You begin to understand something that words alone cannot explain.

    Many of us have experienced this in life. We have said:

“You don’t understand what I feel.”
“You don’t know what is happening to me."
"You dont know what I’m going through.”

    That is because real love transforms the person from within, and no one can understand that same way until they feel it, themselves..

    The same is true in the spiritual life. If you truly encounter Jesus in the Eucharist, your life changes.
Because the Eucharist is not ordinary food.
It is not pizza.
It is not french fries.
It is not bread in the ordinary sense.
It is spiritual nourishment, on a divine level.

    And what is spiritual reaches deep inside — to places the eyes of others cannot see, but which the heart of the recipient can feel.

    So today, on Corpus Christi, I invite you to pray:

“Lord, help me fall more deeply in love with You through the Eucharist. I want my life to change on that divine level. I want to be different. I want You to fill the emptiness in my heart and make me whole.”

The Eucharist transforms.
The Eucharist changes lives.
The Eucharist fills the soul.

But we must approach it with faith, openness, and love.

✠✠✠

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

This originated with an original Spanish language tubecast by Father Robinson Gonzalez on OxyEspiritual, June 7, 2026. It has been adapted and edited for this format... https://www.youtube.com/@oxiespiritual1320