Gift of the Eucharist
On this feast of Corpus Christi, we celebrate the great mystery of the Eucharist, when in his grace the incarnate Son of God became true food for us. In his encyclical Laudato Si, Pope Francis lauds this gift God has given us: “It is in the Eucharist that all that has been created finds its greatest exaltation. Grace, which tends to manifest itself tangibly, found unsurpassable expression when God himself became man and gave himself as food for his creatures. The Lord, in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter…In the Eucharist, fullness is already achieved; it is the living center of the universe, the overflowing core of love and of inexhaustible life. Joined to the incarnate Son, present in the Eucharist, the whole cosmos gives thanks to God” (no. 236).
—Fr. Rick McGurn, SJ, is a retreat director at Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House in Barrington, IL.
Prayer
See today before us laid the living and life-giving Bread,
theme for praise and joy profound…
Let the praise be loud and high:
sweet and tranquil be the joy felt today in every breast.
—Sequence for Corpus Christi