Homily – Corpus Christi – Year A – 2026 – Fr Jerry Browne (National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies #Southafrica #swaziland #eswatini #Botswana)
One of the questions I sometimes ask parents as they prepare to have their children baptised is: “What is the difference between receiving a gift and opening a gift?”
Most parents immediately understand that they are not the same thing. They think of birthday presents, wedding gifts, or perhaps Christmas gifts that were gratefully received but somehow ended up stored away in a cupboard, a garage, or an attic. The gift belongs to them. They possess it. Yet it has never really become part of their lives.
The feast of Corpus Christi invites us to ask a similar question: Have we merely received the Eucharist, or have we truly opened the gift?
The first reading from Deuteronomy (8:2-23, 14-16) takes us back to the desert. Moses reminds the people how God fed them with manna when they were hungry, frightened, and uncertain about the future. Every morning they awoke to discover that God had once again provided what they needed for that day.
The lesson was not simply about bread. It was about trust. The people had to learn that life itself was a gift and that God could be trusted. In the desert, stripped of their comforts and certainties, they discovered that they depended not on their own strength, but on the faithfulness of God.
Most of us do not live in a physical desert. Yet we all know what it is like to experience desert moments: times of uncertainty, grief, disappointment, loneliness, illness, or fear. Moments when we realise that we are not as self-sufficient as we imagined.
The Eucharist reminds us that we do not walk through those deserts alone. God still feeds his people.
Many centuries after the manna in the wilderness, Jesus takes that image and brings it to its fulfilment. In today’s Gospel he makes one of the most astonishing statements in all of Scripture: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever” (John 6:51).
Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not say, “I will give you bread.” He says, “I am the bread.” The manna was a gift from God. In the Eucharist, God gives not merely a gift, but himself.
Every other gift that God gives us is something from his hand. The Eucharist is different. In the Eucharist, God gives us his very heart.
That is why the Eucharist lies at the very heart of our Catholic faith. Every time we come to Mass, the distance between heaven and earth disappears. The risen Christ gives himself completely to us: Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. What greater gift could God possibly give?
Yet there is something even more remarkable. Christ does not simply come to us in the Eucharist. He seeks to transform us through the Eucharist.
St Augustine once told his people: “Be what you see; receive what you are.” When we receive the Body of Christ, we are called to become the Body of Christ.
I often think of those wonderful parishioners who take Holy Communion to the sick and housebound. They arrive carrying a small pyx, but in reality they bring something infinitely greater. They bring Christ himself.
Often the sick person has been waiting all week for that moment. Their face lights up. Their loneliness is eased. Their faith is strengthened. That is what the Eucharist does. It brings Christ into human situations.
Every time we receive Holy Communion, Christ desires to do the same through us. He wishes to enter the world through our hands, our words, our compassion and our love.
In the second reading (1 Corinthians 10:16-17), St Paul reminds us that “though there are many of us, we form a single body because we all have a share in this one loaf.” The Eucharist not only unites us with Christ; it unites us with one another.
Every Eucharist is a protest against division. The world encourages us to define ourselves by what separates us: race, politics, wealth, nationality, ideology, and status. Christ gathers us around one table and reminds us that what unites us is greater than what divides us.
Around this altar there are no strangers. We come from different backgrounds, carry different burdens, and have travelled different roads, yet we receive the same Lord and are invited to become one body. The Eucharist is God’s answer to a fragmented world.
That is why the Eucharist can never remain something private. We cannot receive the Bread of Life while ignoring those who hunger for food, friendship, forgiveness, or hope. We cannot receive the One who gave everything for us while refusing to give ourselves to others.
Every Mass ends with a sending forth. We are fed so that we may feed others. We are loved so that we may love others. We are blessed so that we may become a blessing to others.
Today Christ places the greatest gift imaginable into our hands.
The question is not whether we have received the gift. Most of us have received it hundreds, perhaps even thousands of times.
The real question is “Have we allowed Christ to transform our hearts, our relationships, our priorities, and our lives?”
Have we allowed the One whom we receive at this altar to become visible in the way we speak, the way we forgive, the way we serve, and the way we love?
For the world will never see the Eucharist walking down the street. It will see us.
And if we truly become what we receive, then through our words, our compassion, our forgiveness, and our love, others will encounter Christ himself.
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Please consider praying a decade of the rosary on a daily basis for the evangelising Mission of the Church and the Pope’s intentions.
The pope’s prayer intention for June is ‘For the values of sports’.
Let us pray that sports be an instrument of peace, encounter, and dialogue among cultures and nations, and that they promote values such as respect, solidarity, and personal growth.
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Blessed Pauline Jaricot, Pray for us. 🙏🏼🙏🏼
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Batswana Catholics Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference Catholic Institute of Education Catholic Diocese of Kimberley Youth & Young Adults Ministry Catholic Diocese of Mthatha Catholic Diocese Of Kroonstad Catholic Diocese of Port Elizabeth Missionary Childhood #faith #hope #love #Eucharist #catholic