02 June 2024

Today, on this beautiful day, as we celebrate the great Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, tthe children are going to receive their First Holy Communion. It’s a beautiful day to contemplate on the power of the Eucharist.

Today, the Lord gives us three beautiful messages. What does the Eucharist give you? First of all, the Eucharist gives you eternal life. I like nan, I like chicken curry, I like mutton, I like buttered chicken, but they cannot give me eternal life. Do they? No. They only nourish my physical body. But what gives me eternal life after my death is the Eucharistic Lord. The Lord who gives His own precious blood; the Lord who gives us His precious body. Only that will take me to eternal life. All other earthly food, none of them would give me eternal life.

Today, we have to think: which food am I giving more interest? Do I give importantce to this eternal food that the Lord gives – the precious Body and Blood of Christ - or always to earthly food? Today we have to make that change because the Lord has clearly said, in John chapter 6, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood, they have eternal life. I am the Bread of Life that came down from heaven.”

So this is the first message. Only my Euchartistic Lord would give me life after death. It is this living God who gives Himself everyday in the form of His flesh and blood in the Holy Mass, He gives me eternal life. Nobody else can give me eternal life, not even my very own best of friend Only the Eucharistic food, the Body and Blood of Christ, could give you eternal life.

The second message is this: The Eucharistic Lord - the Holy Communion - gives you deliverance. You remember the two disciples walking to Emmaus? Before experiencing this living God, the Eucharistic Lord, what happened to those two disciples as they were walking? They were all depressed, they were all in fear. They lost hope because Jesus is dead, because everything is gone. They thought that all is finished, everything is over; walking with complete depressed feeling, no hope, everything is all gone. But then, when the Lord broke the bread, what happened? Their eyes were opened and were completely delivered from all bondages.

If you are going through depression, if you are going through anxiety, the Eucharistic Lord will give you deliverance. If you pray to this living God in the Holy mass everyday, you will find deliverance in your body, mind, soul and spirit. That’s what happened to these two disciples at Emmaus. Before experiencing the Euchartistic Lord, they were all completely depressed, worried about everything; “what is gonna happen because Jesus is gone?” At the breaking of the bread their eyes were opened. They who ran away from Jerusalem, now are turning back to Jerusalem because they found deliverance; they found Jesus is risen. This God who died has rose again, is alive! They could experience him in the breaking of the bread. This is the second message. If you are going through worries, if you are going through anxieties, the Eucharistic Lord will give you deliverance always.

The third message is: the power of the Eucharist - gives you healing. If you are going through a sickness, when you receive the body of Christ, what happens? You experience complete healing. I remember being in India sometime back, there was my own professor. His own mother was in the hospital. She was in the ICU and was at the point of death so he called up to ask for communion to be given to his mother. The priest says,” when I gave communion to her, her face became so bright.” You know what happened? The next day she was discharged from the hospital. After that, she lived for more than 4 and a half years. The woman was about to die, but the Eucharistic Lord gave her healing and then she experienced eternal life. The Eucharistic Lord always gives you healing – physical healing, mental healing, psychological healing. You are delivered from all these negative forces that affect your life.

I remember an Indian priest, he was sharing his own testimony. He was having this disease called psoriasis. You get some kind of boils; the body smells because of this sickness. He has this condition and then this fellow priest told him, “Don’t worry. Before you celebrate the mass, expose the Blessed Sacrament. Just look at the Eucharistic Lord for one hour.” And you know what he did? Just before mass, he exposed the Blessed Sacrament and then he was just looking at the Euchartistic Lord. When he was looking at Him - first day, second day, third day… he found his disease disappeared completely. That is the power of just looking at the Eucharistic Lord.

When you, at first, do not know the power of the Euchartist, sometimes Communion becomes a kind of ritual. No, it is a power – graces flow from this Tabernacle: the grace of love, the grace of healing, the grace of power we experience. We have to give the utmost respect to the Euchartistic Lord. That’s why when we come to the Church, the way we behave, the way we talk, the way we genuflect, the way we kneel down – all should give the topmost priority to this living God who is alive 24/7, who is just looking at you, whose love vibrates from this beautiful Tabernacle.

So dear brothers in Jesus Christ, on this beautiful day, let’s carry this message. From now on, I’ll give the Eucharistic Lord topmost priority because I want to have eternal life. I want to receive and experience this God everyday. I will look at him and spend long time with Him in the Eucharistic presence and experience the power of grace.

And let’s pray for the children today as they’re going to receive this living God, who is going to enter their hearts, enter their body. They are going to receive this heart of Christ burning with love in their hearts and you will see how they are going to live it in their life, and how they will all be blest with the power of the Holy Spirit. So let’s pray for them, and for all of us, that we become Eucharistic lovers. Let us pray for this grace. Amen.
 

Photos Courtesy of Kyo Kobayashi. Homily transcribed by Anabelle de los Reyes.