The Bread and Wine We Offer:

 

    

The Body and Blood of Christ Sunday 2026 

June 7, 2026

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Deuteronomy 8:2-16; Psalm 147; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58

 

By celebrating the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, the Church reminds us of two things: God will always nourish us, and through our partaking of the Eucharist, we become, as St. Paul pointed out, the Universal Body and Blood of Christ. Through our full participation in the Eucharist, we see that our faith is nourished. Faith is first and foremost an action. Faith is proof of what we believe. Faith becomes our capacity for loving action. 

 

The Gospel reminds us that Jesus is the Living Bread and he invites us to drink his Blood, and we become what and who we eat. The Gospel writes, “The one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” By sharing in this meal of faith, we become the living, eternal Body and Blood of the Universal Christ. We become love in action. 

 

Let’s talk about what we do when we gather for Eucharist. After we ask for God’s mercy and sing “Glory to God,” the priest says, “Let us pray.” There might be an awkward brief silence and then the priest picks up his book and says a short prayer. It is not that the priest forgot his place or what he is to do next. This is a privileged moment if presented rightly. This is your moment to remember all that has happened during the week, the accomplishments and struggles, all the stuff of daily life, and you are to raise them up to God’s consciousness. Once that is done, the priest collects your prayers and lifts them up to God, the Father, God, the Parent. All the stuff of your week is gathered and offered to God. We offer to God all of our human experiences.

 

During the offertory, the community offers to God bread and wine as a token gift of gratitude. These are the parts of the meal that Jesus blessed at the Passover supper and asked us to remember. When we offer bread, it is not merely wafers of wheat. The bread is designed to symbolize all human effort, all that you set out to do in the last week. It is your labor, study, research, gardening, cooking – all forms of work and striving. This bread contains every effort that we expend to make our lives pleasing to God and to one another. 

 

We also offer wine, which is something that was first crushed, like grapes. Wine represents whatever crushes the efforts of humanity. This includes all the suffering that people will experience – any pain, anguish, grief, frustration, confusion, failures, and losses. We offer to God anything that hinders and diminishes our strivings. The bread and the wine represent the totality of human life and experience. We place it upon the altar for the Holy Spirit to transform them as the priest raises them up on your behalf. They are brought into the Living Body and Blood of Christ, who seeks to enrich humanity by bringing everyone together in charity.

 

The communion that we receive is a spiritual and physical union of hearts, minds, and bodies of all who are gathered. When we seek communion, we affirm our covenant with God, which entails naturally care for the person next to us. We agree to create unity in Christ as we live and move and have our being in Him. As we participate, we are changed and transformed over time, little by little, into Christ. 

 

When we celebrate the Eucharist, through the Holy Spirit, God transforms us to make us more like Christ. We raise our human labors and our sufferings, alongside the bread and wine, and we are the object of God’s transformation. Let us offer ourselves to our God as fully as we can. Let us raise all that we carry with us so God may touch them with grace. We are profoundly changed, and so are our efforts and sufferings, so that we can be shared with a hungering world.