ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Dear Boys and Girls—all of you who have made your First Holy communion this year,
Dear Parents and Families,
Dear Catholic People, assembled with our Bishops, Priests, Deacons and Religious,
Dear Friends in our Lord Jesus Christ,

This is a wonderful day—a wonderful feast day: the feast of Corpus Christi; the feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is a day of very special blessing for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. All our children who have made their First Holy Communion this year have been invited to celebrate together in our Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. Our children are wearing their First communion outfits and they are prepared to walk in procession at the end of Mass in order to show publicly that they believe in Jesus present in the Holy Eucharist and that they want to live in His love.

And all of us, dear friends, who are gathered here in the Cathedral, in the Chapel and also outside are making a solemn profession of our holy Catholic faith in the Eucharist. And what is it exactly that we believe?

We believe what Jesus told us: that He promised to give us His Body and Blood as our food and drink. And we believe that Jesus actually fulfilled that promise at the Last Supper when He instituted the Holy Eucharist and gave His Apostles and their successors the power to say Mass and, in His name, to change bread and wine into His Body and Blood.

Our Gospel today tells us how Jesus prepared His Apostles to accept His teaching—which was something new and hard to grasp. In the sixth chapter of Saint John’s gospel, we see first how Jesus, after He had multiplied five loaves and two fish, fed a large crowd of thousands of people. After Jesus did this, He explained that He would give them still another type of food: His own Body and Blood. These are Jesus’ words proclaimed in the Gospel today: "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."

For some people these clear words of Jesus were difficult to accept. Some people objected, saying: "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" Jesus wanted to explain so as to help the people accept His words and to accept His person. He could have said: "No, you misunderstood me. I didn’t mean what I said; I was only speaking figuratively; what I really meant was that the bread I will give is a little symbol of my body." But, no, Jesus then repeated his original teaching in different ways. How many times? Once? Twice? No. Actually, Jesus repeated His very important statement seven times.

As the Son of God, He could not leave people in doubt about the meaning of His words on such an important subject. And so He began to repeat seven more times:

(1) "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."

(2) "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day."

(3) "For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink."

(4) "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him."

(5) "...the one who feeds on me will have life because of me."

(6) "This is the bread that came down from heaven."

(7) "Whoever eats this bread will live forever."

Dear friends: we see that Jesus meant what He said. And this is why we are here today, because we believe the words of Jesus. We know that, as the Son of God, He has the power to do what, humanly speaking, is impossible. We accept the words of Jesus because we accept Jesus Himself as true God and true Man. What He tells us is true, because He cannot deceive nor be deceived. We know, moreover, that Jesus loves us, that He died for us on the Cross, and that He gives us His Body and Blood precisely so that we can live with Him forever in the glory of heaven, in the glory of the Most Blessed Trinity.

Dear boys and girls, dear friends: This is the wonderful message that the Church proclaims today: that Jesus is truly with us in the Holy Eucharist. He gives us His Body and Blood as an expression of His love. And by our presence today and by our prayers we acknowledge His love and show Him our love in return.

And finally, dear parents: what a magnificent role you exercise in handing on to your children our holy Catholic faith, our belief in the true presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament! In your marriage you have experienced God’s love through one another; you have communicated love and transmitted life to your children and you continue to strive by your own faith and example to introduce your children to the fullness of God’s love that is found in the Holy Eucharist.

The feast of Corpus Christi, this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ is precious for the entire community of the Church, but how personally and profoundly meaningful it is for all our families—parents and children, especially our First Communicants—for whom it is such an outpouring of the love of Jesus Christ, who once again repeats to all of us today: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; ... and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world." Amen.