Homily on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

Why Do We Need The Eucharist

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Year A

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, June 7, 2026

Today, we celebrate the gift of Jesus himself. We celebrate his presence under the appearances of Bread and Wine. In today’s Gospel, Jesus makes the most outrageous and controversial statement in the entire Bible, saying, “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.” I tell you, this teaching led most of his disciples to walk away from him. And after more than two thousand years, those words still drive many away from Jesus. Some leave physically by dissociating from Christ and his Church; others leave spiritually. Although they still come to Mass, they don't believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and don't adore Jesus there. 

But why do we need the Eucharist? Among other reasons, I will give you four. First, life is a journey. On this journey, we need nourishment, sustenance, and refreshment. No other food can offer us all of these, but the Body of Christ. Ordinary bread sustains our ordinary natural life by giving us the vegetable life of wheat. Jesus knows the brunt of this life's journey. He lived it himself, so he journeys with us and offers himself to us as our nourishment and support. In the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Eucharist is best understood as spiritual food. He said that just as Baptism is the birth of spiritual life and Confirmation the growth in spiritual life, so the Eucharist is “alimentum,” food for the spiritual life. Just as food is essential for physical life, so this FOOD is required for the life of the soul, spiritual life. It is the spiritual life that sustains the physical. A healthy and strong spiritual life keeps the physical body fired up, joyful, and ready to go on life's journey. The spiritual life we are talking about here is made strong and healthy only by the spiritual food—the Eucharistic Jesus. A basic law of science is the law of cause and effect: the effect cannot exceed the cause; nothing can give what it does not have. Thus, stones cannot give life, but bread can—it has what is needed to nourish life. And Christ can give eternal life, supernatural life, divine life, to both souls and bodies because he has it. This is why we insist that Jesus is divine. He is God. If he is just a man, even a perfect man, he can only give human life, which is temporal, mortal, and comes to an end. But if he is divine, he can give divine life, which is immortal and eternal. There are two Greek words for “life.” One is “bios,” which means natural, mortal life. The other is “Zoe,” which means supernatural, eternal life. Zoe is the word that Jesus uses in his Eucharistic discourse. So, when we receive the Eucharist, our “bios” changes into “Zoe.” The reason the Eucharist gives us eternal life is that it gives us Christ himself, and only Christ can give eternal life. Jesus says, “The one who feeds on me will have life (that is, eternal life) because of me.” That life is really in us because it is really in him. As the saying goes, “You are what you eat.”

Why do we need the Eucharist? Second, life can be exhausting. Today, many people have hit a dead end. They can’t move forward or even go back. For such people, the future is scary and evil, and going backward is twice as scary and bad. They become trapped, tired, and worn out. If there is any movement at all, it is toward the darkest place. Such people will need a clinical assessment from a doctor. They will need the support of family members, friends, colleagues, and church members (if they are churchgoers). After all of the above, what they need most urgently is alimentum spirituale—spiritual food for the life of the soul.  

Why do we need the Eucharist? Third, the Eucharist is the means by which we are Christified in body and soul, mind and heart. Through our regular contact with the Reality of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, our lowly body is Christified and prepared for heaven. The Eucharist joins us directly to Christ and unites us with all other believers to form one spiritual body. We receive the Holy Eucharist to be spiritually nourished, to be united directly with Christ, and to be bonded as a community in His love. Receiving it feeds the soul just as physical food feeds the body. It is the heavenly food that enables us to participate in the love between the Father and the Son. In the Eucharist, the sacrifice of Christ Jesus is made fully present, and it is the fullest expression of the love of the Father and the Son for the human race. In the Eucharist, the believer encounters the Jesus of Nazareth who suffered, was crucified, died, and rose. In his homily on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi in 2001, Pope John Paul II asserts that, “Christ who died and rose for us is really present in the Holy Eucharist. In the consecrated Bread and Wine, the same Jesus of the Gospel remains with us whom the disciples met and followed, whom they saw crucified and risen, whose wounds Thomas touched, exclaiming prostrate in adoration: “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).

Why do we need the Eucharist? Four, Jesus says he is the living bread from heaven. We all believe that heaven is the final place of rest for those who loved and served God. In the Eucharist, the Church triumphant (saints in heaven) and the Church militant (saints on earth) participate in and share a meal together. In the Eucharist, the marriage of heaven and earth is celebrated over and over again. In the Eucharist, the communion of the inhabitants of heaven and the inhabitants of earth continues unbroken. The Eucharist is called “Panis Angelorum” (the Bread of Angels). Angels are God’s messengers. Throughout the Bible, angels are depicted as a body of spiritual beings who serve as intermediaries between God and human beings. Although God has “made humanity a little less than angels” (Psalm 8:6), angels are created beings, just as human beings. Their nourishment, refreshment, and sustenance is the Bread of Life. So it should be with us as well. For the great St. Pope John Paul II, “We are nourished with this bread to become authentic witnesses of the Gospel. We need this bread to grow in love, the necessary means for us to recognize the face of Christ in the faces of our brothers and sisters” (Homily of John Paul II on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, Thursday 14, June 2001).

God bless you!