General. Today’s liturgy is in remembrance of the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ in a more solemn manner than we could have done on Maundy Thursday when this memorial originated and when there was greater emphasis on the Passion and Death through which Jesus had to pass. The Sequence preceding the Gospel story reminds us that in this meal we call the Eucharist, we should uplift our praise to the King who gave us His Body as life-giving bread.

Genesis. Bread and wine were considered as a welcoming sign in the Old Testament, as in giving a meal a person would be showing a wish to preserve and extend life. This thought was further developed by Jesus in the Last Supper, when he was about to give his life for us.

First Epistle to the Corinthians. The recount of the Last Supper was revealed directly to St Paul by the Risen and Glorified Christ. Yet Paul makes an important theological addendum to simple the narration, namely that in consuming the body and blood of Jesus, the Christian would be doing a public act of faith in announcing the Paschal mystery hoping in the day of Christ’s final return to earth to carry us to the Paschal Meal of the Lamb in heaven.

St Luke. Jesus goes against the grain and feeds his hungry listeners, something which his disciples did not want to go out of their way to do. He sits the people in groups of fifty, a prefiguration of the small Christian community, and multipled the five loaves and two fishes which the disciples distributed to the multitude. The Christian community has indeed the potential of giving the Bread and the Word of Life to anybody who is willing to sit and submit himself to God’s Will.

Homilies Index Page - Liturgy of the Hours - Home