Love Come Down

Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ), a special day where we draw attention to our Eucharistic Lord, and was instituted as a Feast in the entire Latin Church after a Eucharistic miracle in Bolsena, Italy in 1263.

At each Holy Mass, the bread and wine offered by the priest to God are changed in substance (transubstantiation), although not necessarily changed in form, into the very Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus. This is where Heaven reaches down while the elements of the bread and wine are lifted up, and in a parallel to the Incarnation in Bethlehem, Love himself comes down not just to dwell with us, but more than that: to dwell in us. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says “"My Father gives you the true bread from heaven; for the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world" (Jn 6:32-33), and then even identifies himself, his own flesh and blood, with that bread, saying: "I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh" (Jn 6:51). Jesus thus shows that he is the bread of life which the eternal Father gives to mankind.

Bishop Thomas Olmsted, in his apostolic exhortation Veneremur Cernui, wrote, “Our Catholic faith passed on to us from the Apostles affirms that after the words of consecration, what seems to our senses to remain just simple unleavened bread and wine really become the Son of God and Savior of the world. For this reason, Saint Thomas Aquinas through his beautiful Eucharistic hymn “Adoro Te Devote” invites us to have a greater trust in Jesus’ words about His Body and Blood, even if the reality may seem too good to be true: “Sight, touch, taste fail with regard to Thee, but only by hearing does one believe surely; I believe whatever God’s Son said: nothing is truer than the word of Truth.” And in the hymn of “Tantum Ergo,” he invites us to beg the Lord for this needed faith: “May faith supplement what our senses fail to grasp.”

The Lord Jesus invites us to respond with faith like Peter, “To whom shall we go, you have the words of everlasting life,” and make a commitment not just to believe His words that He is the Bread from heaven, but to build our lives according to that belief. Jesus is asking us to make Him the “source and summit” of all Christian life (Lumen Gentium, no. 11). He is asking us to choose him who has chosen to dwell among us and has made the promise and commitment to always be with us.”