Corpus Christi

In the year 1263 a priest from Prague was on his way to Rome making a pilgrimage asking God for help to strengthen his faith since he was having doubts about his vocation. Along the way he stopped in Bolsena 70 miles north of Rome. While celebrating Mass there, as he raised the host during the consecration, the bread turned into flesh and began to bleed. The drops of blood fell onto the small white cloth on the altar, called the corporal. It was in the following year,1264, Pope Urban IV instituted the feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus, today’s feast Corpus Christi. That blood-stained the small white cloth is preserved in the Basilica of Orvieto, north of Rome, in Italy.
These miracles are not the most important aspect of our spiritual life and we are not bound to believe them either. And once the bread has become real flesh and wine has become real blood we don’t need anybody’s help to believe in it. But the peak of our faith is to believe the consecrated bread and wine as the Body and Blood of Jesus.
Why did Jesus give us this sacrament in the first place?
Jesus said that he came that we may have life and have it to the full (John 20:20). In the Eucharist he provides a visible means of communicating this life to us so that we can be fully alive both in this world and in the next. As Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day” (John 6:53-54).
So, today we ask God to increase our faith and to help us to be transformed more like him as we receive his Body and Blood.