21 June 2025 – The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ | Corpus Christi (Sunset Mass)

by Rev Fr Fabian Dicom

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi. We gather around the altar, we kneel in adoration and we say with reverence and faith: This is Jesus.

But today, I want to say something equally important. This is also us. We are the body of Christ. We do not only receive the Eucharist. We must become it. And that makes all the difference.

Let us begin where the First Reading begins.

Melchizedek, the mysterious priest of God, comes forward with bread and wine. He blesses Abraham not because Abraham has followed all the rules. No! But because God is a God who blesses and feeds first.

First. Bread and wine are given before laws are laid down, before rituals are established, before worthiness are even discussed. In other words, God gives first. God feeds before asking. That is the Eucharist.

That is the seed of communion, a communion that welcomes before it judges. A communion that unites before it filters. A communion that includes before it sorts.

And then Paul in the Second Reading reminds us of what Jesus did on the night he was betrayed. He took bread, broke it and gave it saying: This is my body. This is my blood. The words of consecration: Do this as a memorial of me.

But let us not reduce the ‘Do this‘ as a mere liturgical act.

My dear brothers and sisters, it is a way of life. It means live as I live, be bread for others, let your life be broken open for love. This is the Eucharist, not just on Saturdays, on Sundays, but every day.

And this is also the meaning of communion. Not just unity in ritual, like we are here, but solidarity in living. Communion means no one is left outside. And this is why we call this Eucharist the Holy Communion. No one is labelled as other, no one is disposable.

And then in the Gospel, we see the heart of this Feast of Corpus Christi. Thousands follow Jesus into the wilderness. They are tired, they are hungry, confused and poor. The disciples panic. ‘We don’t have enough, We don’t know where to get the food. Send them away. Let them go and fend for themselves.‘

But Jesus says, ‘You give them something to eat.‘ That is it. That is Eucharist. Not just a ritual but a call, not a performance but a practice. You give them something. You be the bread.

And in that moment, Jesus turns scarcity into communion. From nothing into communion.

5 loaves and 2 fish become enough for all. No one is sent away. All are fed. No one is excluded. No one.

Communion is borne not of plenty but of shared trust in a generous God.

But now, my dear brothers and sisters, we must face something painful.

Somewhere along the way we the church turned this table of radical welcome into a place of regulation, of rules and of law. We began to ask who is qualified, who is worthy enough, who has fasted long enough, who is in the right state of grace. And slowly, the table that Jesus set for the hungry, for the broken, for the weak became a table that excluded the very people who need it most.

That is what is happening to us. And we must ask,

When did we lose the meaning of communion? When did the church become a fortress for the perfect instead of a field hospital for the wounded?

Let us remember this. Let us remember this because we are so used to listening to this that perhaps it has lost its impact in our lives. Let us remember that when Jesus walked on earth, every one had access to Him. Every single person.

He ate with sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes. He touched the leper before the leper was healed. He welcome the poor, the unclean, the forgotten.

We cannot even fathom that in the church. 

He fed the 5,000 without checking anyone’s credentials. They didn’t have baptism certificates during that time.

Not once did He say, not once, ‘You are not holy enough to receive Me.‘

So why do we say that?
Why do we act like zealots, religious zealots guarding the door when Jesus spent His life breaking down the walls? 
Why are some of us so hard on ourselves?
For heaven’s sake!

The Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect. It is food for the journey in the presence of Jesus who comes to nourish us in our brokenness, who comes to strengthens us in our weakness, who comes to send us out to do the same. So I say to you, brothers and sisters. I say to all of you,

If you are tired, come.
If you are struggling, come.
If you are ashamed, if you are unsure, you are broken, come! Still come and receive the Lord.
The table is not ours. It is the Lord’s and His invitation has no fine print. He simply says,
Take and eat.

The movement from exclusion to communion is the very heart of the Gospel. And the Eucharist is the roadmap. And to receive it, all of us, is to enter into this movement ourselves.

But don’t stop there because the Eucharist does not end at the altar. It begins here.

To receive the body of Christ is to become His body in the world, standing with the excluded, feeding the hungry not just with bread or with groceries but with dignity and justice.

The Eucharist must spill into the streets. Can you imagine that? Into the homes of the poor, the cries of the oppressed, the wounds of our fractured world.

And this is where the theology of liberation and the Eucharist meet. Eucharist is a celebration of this liberation of humanity. And they both meet in the intersection of faith and action, of adoration and justice, of worship and mission. That is how it is. 

So let me say it plainly.

If the Eucharist we celebrate does not move us to welcome the stranger, to stand with the poor, to confront systems that keep people hungry, to even confront systems in the church that marginalise people, then we have not truly understood what we received. 

The body of Christ is still broken in Gaza, in Myanmar, in our detention camps, in the inner cities. The blood is still poured out in evicted homes, poisoned lands and silenced voices.

To be Eucharist is to respond, not with piety alone but with presence. Not with words but with our lives.

So come, beloved, come to the table. Be fed and also be awakened.

This is not just Jesus for you. It is Jesus in you. And through you for the whole world.

The Eucharist says, ‘No one is excluded.‘

The mission says, ‘No one is forgotten.‘ 

This is communion. This is church. This is who we must become.

We bring the 5 loaves and the 2 fish of our lives, you and I, our smallness, our weakness, our hopes, our efforts and place them in the hands of Jesus. And the Lord will take them, He will bless them, He will break them and He will give them so that multitudes will be fed. The lonely will be seen. The poor will be lifted. And the world will taste. Because of you the world will taste the goodness of God.

Amen.

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