Corpus Christi

Scriptures

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me *draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. I am the bread of life.” John 6: 44, 48

*Or “attracts him,” or “pulls him.” The word is used of pulling or dragging, often by force. It is even used once of magnetic attraction.

-Pontiff: High Priest, Bridge-builder

-The solemnity is not just the simple memorial of an historical event which took place almost two thousand years ago at the Last Supper; rather, it recalls us to the ever-present reality of Jesus always living in our midst. In the Eucharist, Jesus is really Emmanuel, God with us.

-If the uniting of all the faithful in the body of Christ starts in *baptism and is manifest, acc. to *Irenaeus, in the profession of the same faith, guaranteed by the bishops, successors of the *apostles (Ad. Haer. IV, 33,8), the sacrament ordered to realizing the unity of the ecclesial body of Christ is the Eucharist: already in *Didache 9,4 we find the image of the grains scattered on the mountain, gathered into a single loaf, to signify the effect of the Eucharist, which gathers the faithful; appearing again in other liturgical texts. it was used to illustrate the close relation between the eucharistic body and the ecclesial body, together with the analogous image of the wine produced from different grapes (Cypr., Ep. 69,5,2; John Chrys., Hom. 24 in 1Cor.). *Augustine esp., grappling with the divisions caused by the *Donatists, developed its implications esp. in mystagogical contexts, explaining the Eucharist in this way: just as fire is needed to obtain the eucharistic bread from the dough, composed of grains (the faithful) and water (baptism), so the *Holy Spirit is necessary for the ecclesial body of Christ as the unifying element

Paul teaches that the Church , Ekklesia, is the body of Christ.

Catholic Bible Dictionary C. The Body of Christ

The Church as the body of Christ also gives Paul the means to stress the unity among all believers (1 Cor 12:12; Rom 12:4). This unity finds its sacramental reality first in baptism (1 Cor 12:13), then in the Eucharist: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body” (1 Cor 10:17).