Sunday Reflections
Most Holy Body & Blood of Christ – June 22, 2025

Reflection by:
Fr. Jim Link, CR
Every year when we celebrate the Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, or Corpus Christi, I get a flashback to my childhood growing up in Louisville, Kentucky. On the Sunday of this feast, all the parishes of the archdiocese and thousands of Catholic parishioners would gather at Churchill Downs racetrack (it was off-season). In one elaborate ritual, with singing and prayers, altar servers, Knights of Columbus, members of various sodalities, and other religious groups would walk in procession around the track with the Archbishop coming last, holding up the monstrance, and concluding with benediction. Whether you were Catholic or not, the whole experience told you that something special was going on there that day.
Today, every time I receive holy communion and I look at the host in my hand, I think back to my childhood memories of Corpus Christi, and I am struck dumbfounded. In Louisville, we had a sense of the awesomeness of this mystery and did our best to celebrate it with an elaborate ritual. At each Mass, we mark this mystery in much simpler terms. Like the baby Jesus coming unknown and helpless into this world, the risen Christ, in the form of bread, comes helplessly into the palm of our hands. Here lies the creator of the universe, the one who embraced the totality of humanness, even unto death, and forgave us for the many sins we had committed in trying to deny or walk away from God. We are loved and forgiven.
I think sometimes when we receive communion, as we respond ‘Amen’ to the minister’s proclamation of ‘The Body of Christ,’ I hear Christ saying, over and over again, “I love you.” If only our hearts could hear and embrace these words from Christ! They would set us free. Risen and ascended, Christ did not want to abandon us but left himself as food, no matter what state of grace we are in.
St. Augustine said, “Christians, become what you eat.” And therein lies the challenge, because just as Christ left himself as nourishment, so too, as we become more Christlike, our lives and service should help feed and nourish the people and the world around us.
This Sunday, as we celebrate this incredible gift of Christ’s body and blood, let us pray for the faith to let our bodies become one with the Risen Christ and to be transformed into what we eat – the Body and Blood of Christ.
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