True Food & True Drink

The Eucharist represents the most profound mystery of Catholic faith, where Jesus Christ becomes truly present in bread and wine through consecration. Just as homemade bread requires personal investment and love, Jesus poured His entire life, death, and resurrection into giving us this gift. When we receive Holy Communion, we become living tabernacles where Christ dwells. Recent surveys show only one-third of Catholics believe in the Real Presence, despite Jesus clearly teaching that we must eat His body and drink His blood to have life within us. The Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano provides scientific evidence of this reality, where bread became actual human heart tissue. We must approach Communion with reverence and faith, allowing this encounter to transform us into Christ's presence in the world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

My brothers and sisters in the Lord, you have heard me speak many times about my Nona, and so on my mother's side it was pure Sicilian. And so for my nona, there were three important things in life, usually in this order: faith, family, and food. Now, if you aggravated my nona, sometimes food came before family. But in growing up, we would eat with my grandparents every single night. In fact, we would have dinner together all the way until I was through high school. And so my Nona did all the cooking. And so, because of that, I never had to learn how to cook. I never had a desire to learn how to cook. Today I still don't know how to cook. But one thing I remember is that after she had passed away, I was in college at the time, and I thought to myself for a second, you know, maybe it would be a good idea to learn how to cook something. And so my parents were out of town on a little vacation, and so I was gonna have some friends over from college that Sunday evening, so I was gonna cook the meal. Bad idea, but this is what the idea was. And so I decided to go through some of her cookbooks, and of course, some of the cookbooks I was looking for, you know, how do you cook for dummies? And she had things from Julia Child, so we were not on the same page. And so I was going through all the recipes, and I came across something that reminded me so much of her. For my grandmother, it wasn't only about cooking the meal, it was about cooking really everything. When you went for a dinner at her home, she baked the bread, she made the pasta, there was nothing that was really bought from the store. And one of the little index cards was her recipe for bread. And I said, you know what? I think I can do that. I mean, bread's easy. What do you need to do in order to bake bread? Well, let me tell you something. It was really interesting. And so I took out the little index card, and I'm going through it, I'm gathering all the ingredients that it says, I'm mixing all the ingredients together, and I'm following the steps. This started on a Saturday morning. And so after all the ingredients are mixed, of course, you have to knead the bread. And so I'm needing the bread, step two. And then I read step three, need the bread a second time. So I'm kneading the dough again. And then I read step three, and it's in her handwriting, so she says, if you really love the person, you'll need the dough a third time. I'm thinking to myself, these are my friends from college, I don't love them that much, we're gonna skip that step. And so, of course, the bread eventually needs to then rest so that it can rise and eventually needs to go into the oven. And by the time the bread was finished, it was already Saturday afternoon. And it was like, this took a lot of time. This took a lot of work. And so, long story short, the rest of the meal came from takeyauti. But we had homemade bread. But you know, my brothers and sisters, from that experience and then from my experience growing up, there is nothing like homemade bread. The taste, the texture, the smell, it's totally different. And I remember when we were sitting down at that meal and I was recounting this story to my friends who were around the table about the bread, one of them said, Well, do you realize you can go to the store and there's a company called Bunny, and you can get bunny bread, or you can get wonder bread. But it's just not the same. If you've ever had homemade bread, there's a lot of time that's poured into it, there's a lot of effort that's poured into it, there's a lot of love that's poured into it to give you really something amazing. And then when you take that bread and you put on some homemade jam or some honey, or you even use it to make a sandwich, it really makes it transformative. In a real way, my dear friends, I recall that story on the solemnity that we celebrate today of Corpus Christi, the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. Because we do have wonder bread, and it doesn't come from rouse's. We do have, my brothers and sisters, something that it's transformative. It's amazing what bread can become. When bread and wine are brought forth to this altar, and the words of consecration are prayed over them, and they're transformed. They become the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. And just my brothers and sisters, as I recall all the time and effort that I had to pour in to bake that bread, think of everything that Jesus poured in to give us the Eucharist. He poured in his entire life. From the days he walked the earth to his teachings, to his life, to his death, to his resurrection. It's all poured in so that we can receive him into our very selves. On this altar, my dear friends, is an echo of the incarnation. The word becomes flesh and makes its dwelling amongst us. God visits his people. It's both a mystery and it's a miracle. And I wonder, my brothers and sisters, how many times we overlook that? How many times we're just simply going through the motions? How many times has it really hit us that we're coming to receive Jesus? Remember what Jesus says before he ascends into heaven? He says to the disciples, I will be with you always, even until the end of the world. At the Last Supper, he takes the bread and he takes the chalice and he says, Do this in remembrance of me. And the Lord is constantly with us. He constantly desires to be united with us. And do we have that same desire to be united with Him? Because when we receive the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the Lord Jesus, when we receive the Holy Eucharist, my friends, we're taking Jesus into our very selves. We become a living tabernacle, a living monstrance. When our children were making their first communion, they sang the little psalm, Lord, make me a sanctuary. Our body becomes a sanctuary for the Lord, a holy temple. And we're called then to go out into the world to bring that light and love and mercy of Jesus to all those whom we encounter. The great gift that the Lord has given us. Do we really believe? In St. John's Gospel, in chapter 6, of course, we have the bread of life discourse. And Jesus says, Unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you shall not have life within you. And many of the disciples who were following him went in another direction. They left. They said, This saying is hard. Who can accept it? And they no longer follow Jesus. But if you notice in that section of St. John's gospel, Jesus does not change the teaching. Jesus does not water down the teaching. He does not sugarcoat the teaching. He doesn't say, Well, if you can't accept this, let me give you something else. He looks at the 12 and he says to them, Do you want to leave also? And then Peter gets something right. He says, Lord, where shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life. My brothers and sisters, if we as the people of God truly believe Jesus is present on this altar, you've heard me say this before. Every Sunday and every day of the week, we would need the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office out there in the street. Because there'd be so many people trying to get into the parking lot. But do we forget? Do we go through the motions? Do we just check the box? When we come forward in procession to receive Holy Communion, to receive Jesus. When we give our amen, let it be. I believe. And do we go out into the world to proclaim that goodness? It is, my brothers and sisters, a wondrous sacrament. And it's meant to give us life. And so that we may live that life more abundantly. But as we know from recent surveys that have been conducted, only about a third of Catholics, 30%, 33%, depending upon what you read, believe in the real presence, that it's really Jesus. Another third, about 33%, only believe it's a sign or a symbol, just a reenactment, like we're going to a play. What do you believe? And if we really say we believe it's Jesus, how do we live our life? How do we prepare our hearts? Do we come to Mass with a holy excitement? That I'm coming to receive the Lord. And that He's sending me out on mission. Many of you may be familiar with one of the Eucharistic miracles, a very famous one in Lonciano, Italy. A few years ago, I had the privilege of actually being there. And when you go there, they still have the Eucharistic miracle from about 1200 years ago. About 1200 years ago, there was a priest who was celebrating Mass in this little town, and he no longer believed in the real presence. And as he was celebrating Mass, the bread became real flesh. And the blood, excuse me, the wine became real blood. The external accidents, as we would call them, changed. And when you go there today in a huge glass monstrance, which you can see from all directions, you can still see the flesh and the five droplets of blood. In the 1970s, they did scientific testing on it. And they determined that it is real human flesh. It wasn't taken from a cadaver because of the state that it's in. They also determined that the flesh comes from the area of the heart. It comes from the heart muscle tissue. And the droplets of blood are AB. The blood type for the universal receiver. My dear friends, the Lord Jesus wants to receive you and he wants to receive me within his sacred heart. He wants to receive us and call us to this altar so that we can experience that same transformation and so that we can be poured out into the world to continue the Lord's work and the Lord's mission. God is still present in a real and very tangible way. And we are called, my dear friends, to really ask ourselves as we come forward, do we really believe that we're receiving Jesus totally and completely to transform and transfigure our lives? O sacrament most holy. O sacrament divine. All praise and all thanksgiving be every moment of thine. Amen.