Solemnity of Corpus Christi - Jesus, what made You so small? LOVE!

"If I can give you any advice, I beg you to get closer to the Eucharist and to Jesus... We must pray to Jesus to give us that tenderness of the Eucharist."-Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Jesus said to the Jewish crowds:
"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."
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
Jesus said to them,
"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.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
For 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.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread will live forever."

Today the one and only message we have to listen to and to live with is contained in “the bread”. Chapter 6th of St. John's Gospel refers to the miracle of the multiplication of the breads, which is followed by a great talk of Jesus, a fragment of which we are today listening to. We are keenly interested in understanding it, not only to properly live the festivity of the “Corpus Christi” and the sacrament of the Eucharist, but also to fully grasp one of the central messages of John's Gospel.

There are crowds craving for bread. There is an entire mankind, without any hope whatsoever, facing death and a bottomless void, in desperate need for Jesus Christ. And God's People, believer and devotee, that needs to find His real presence to go on living in Him to attain life. There are three kinds of hunger and three experiences of fullness, for three kinds of bread: the material bread, the bread represented by the person of Jesus Christ and the Eucharistic bread.

We know Jesus Christ is the bread of life. Without Him we cannot possibly live: «Apart from me you can do nothing» (Jn 15:5). But, Jesus Christ also wanted to appease the crowd's hunger and, furthermore, He made of it a fundamental evangelic must. Most surely He thought it was a good way to reveal and verify God's salvific love. But He likewise wanted to become accessible to us, in the form of bread, so that, those of us that are still marching on in history, may remain in that love and, thus, attain life.

But, over everything else, He wanted to show us that we have to seek Him and to live in Him; He wanted to prove his love by sating the hungry, by assiduously offering himself in the Eucharist: «Whoever eats of this bread will live forever» (Jn 6:58). St. Augustine commented on this Gospel with daring words: «When you eat Christ, you eat life (…). If, then, you separate to the point of eating the Body and Blood of Christ no more, it is to be feared you die».