Sunday Homily, 7 June 2026 - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

Doesn't eating his flesh mean he’ll die?  How could we stomach eating it anyway?  And in any case, what would eating it achieve?  These are the doubts which are behind the Jews’ question: how can this man give us his flesh to eat?  And until Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, they are fair questions.  Normally, we would expect that no individual can bring the kind of benefits the Lord says comes from eating his flesh.

But Jesus’ flesh is no ordinary flesh.  We know this from his miracles: by his own human speech he healed; by his spittle he restored sight.  So, the Eucharist is the climax of Jesus’ giving himself for us.  His flesh is united to the Word of God, through whom we’re told all things were made.  We ourselves were made through the Word of God.  And now that the divine Word has taken human flesh, we are to be remade.  We are to have life in him, not a life which ends in death, but a true life: deathless life, eternal life.

All the Eucharistic miracles witness the extraordinary power contained in the Lord’s great sacrament.  Bleeding hosts, fleshly communions, long-term preservations, saints surviving on nothing else – all speak to the eternal life which we receive in Holy Communion.

To give one example: in Siena, St Catherine’s city though many centuries after her time, thieves broke into the church on 14 August 1730 and stole the ciborium from the tabernacle.  The thieves wanted the precious metal only, so they dumped the hosts into the charity box in another church.  351 hosts were recovered three days later: the exact number the priest had consecrated the day before.  The miracle consists in the freshness of these same hosts.  All these years later, those 351 hosts are reported to be “still fresh, intact, uncorrupted, without chemicals, and do not present any sign of alteration”.  This wonderful happening shows us how Jesus gives us a share in his risen life through the Eucharist.

Jesus’ giving his flesh for us to eat certainly brings on his death.  This is how holy Thursday and Good Friday work together.  “Given for you” says the Lord at the Passover table, the same giving which he then displays and effects on Friday’s Cross.  Full of the Spirit of prophecy and divine faithfulness, our Eucharistic Lord makes good on his promises.  The Eucharistic bread and wine convey the Lord’s sacred humanity to us in a form we find palatable: in the gifts of the altar, there is the whole Christ faithfully and fully presented to us in a way our senses find familiar and appealing.

The Eucharist achieves much in us, indeed everything, because we are saved through the humanity of Christ.  The Lord’s sacred humanity is that which succeeded where we had failed.  Without his perfect obedience to God and loving service of our neighbour, our humanity is doomed to fail.  There will always be consorting with sin unless we have communion with God.  Even herculean efforts to change will ultimately fail without God: we know this from times when we have tried to live without God.  They always end in disappointment.

But the Lord achieved everything for us and in him we achieve all that we need to.  Perfectly adhering to his Father's will even unto death, he showed us how to live.  Obtaining for us grace in endless supply, we are empowered to do all that we must to win heaven.  Putting before us the appearance of food and drink that we typically enjoy, he conveys to us the eternal life which we sorely need.

Questions may persist about how all of this is possible; that is the nature of mystery.  We shall spend our lives, indeed our eternity, wondering at the mystery of God’s love for us.  But let not hard doubts creep in.  Confront them with the awe-full truth of the Eucharist.  Truth himself says to us: “This is my body, given for you.”

Fr Paul Rowse, OP Parish Priest