The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
(Corpus Christi)
June 7, 2026
Piety is a virtue that can get a bad rap. It is sometimes associated with a “better than thou” attitude ostentatiously demonstrated by sanctimonious practices and gestures.
A profound sense of the true meaning of piety captured me when I saw the sculpture “Pietà” in Rome. I had seen a hundred photos of this treasure in previous years, but none touched the beauty and pathos embodied in the marble itself. I was tearful, speechless, and prayerfully united with Mary as she held the broken body of her precious son. What I felt was intense piety, an indescribable oneness with the Holy.
That holy, broken, but resurrected Body of Christ abides with us today in the Church and in the Creation. The redemptive energy of the Trinity, fired in us through the Incarnation, continues in time through Love. Redemption perdures through the love with which we bring the world to God, and God to the world. We are the Body of Christ living in our time.
Over the centuries, many brilliant theologians have approached the mystery of the Body of Christ, each contributing their own insights to help the rest of us grow in faith. For me. Pierre de Chardin, rare combination of scientist and mystic, expressed some of the most beautiful and expansive language about this mystery:
Radiant Word, blazing Power, you who mold the manifold so as to breathe your life into it; I pray you, lay on us those your hands — powerful, considerate, omnipresent, those hands which do not (like our human hands) touch now here, now there, but which plunge into the depths and the totality, present and past, of things so as to reach us simultaneously through all that is most immense and most inward within us and around us.
The Mass On The World – Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, S.J
May the might of those invincible hands direct and transfigure for the great world you have in mind that earthly travail which I have gathered into my heart and now offer you in its entirety. Remold it, rectify it, recast it down to the depths from whence it springs. You know how your creatures can come into being only, like shoot from stem, as part of an endlessly renewed process of evolution.
Do you now therefore, speaking through my lips, pronounce over this earthly travail your twofold efficacious word: the word without which all that our wisdom and our experience have built up must totter and crumble — the word through which all our most far-reaching speculations and our encounter with the universe are come together into a unity. Over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day, say again the words: This is my Body. And over every death-force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, speak again your commanding words which express the supreme mystery of faith: This is my Blood.
A century before De Chardin, the grace-filled poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins also experienced the Body of Christ in the glory of Creation. Both of these writers foreshadowed the cosmic wisdom of our beloved Pope Francis who authored the spiritual masterpiece, Laudato Si’.
The New Testament does not only tell us of the earthly Jesus and his tangible and loving relationship with the world. It also shows him risen and glorious, present throughout creation by his universal Lordship: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19-20). This leads us to direct our gaze to the end of time, when the Son will deliver all things to the Father, so that “God may be everything to every one” (1 Cor 15:28). Thus, the creatures of this world no longer appear to us under merely natural guise because the risen One is mysteriously holding them to himself and directing them towards fullness as their end. The very flowers of the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired are now imbued with his radiant presence.
Laudatory Si’ (100)
Poetry: The Windhover – Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ
To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
” This poem is focused not on feelings or individuality, but on wording Christ. The kenosis of the Son into matter is the heart of all beauty and it is only in Christ that beauty is to be found and it is to Christ that beauty leads.”
Michael Rennier, written and visual artist
Music: This Ancient Love – Carolyn McDade
(to learn more about the inspiring artist Carolyn McDade: http://www.carolynmcdademusic.com/index.htm )
Suggested Scripture: John 6:51-58
For Your Reflection:
- What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
- Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ?
- What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?
Lavish Mercy 