Corpus Christi Reflection 2025

Aid trucks unable to enter Gaza. Image WFP

The feeding of the five thousand. It makes me think of the images I've seen lately of people in Gaza waiting to be fed, of aid trucks queuing at the border while vast crowds make their way to a handful of secure compounds to be given food at gunpoint by security contractors - and that's the lucky ones. This isn't feeding people, this isn't taking care of them - it's using food as means of control, and indeed torture.

Contrast that with Jesus, who cares for the crowd in front of him, not just spiritually, but materially. Contrast that with Jesus, who the night before he died, gave his very self to his disciples, totally out of love for them, knowing that even this would not protect him from being betrayed. They often say that the way to a person's heart is through their stomach - and it's true, to feed a person is (or at least ought to be) such a massive expression of love. Which is why what we see happening elsewhere feels so wrong. You don't mess with people's food, you don't play with food, you don't waste food - it's way too precious.

This also applies when it comes to Holy Communion. People sometimes talk about who may or may not receive Holy Communion, or about the things we do that might disqualify us from availing of this Sacrament. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't such things, but I don't think we would ever ask questions like this if we truly recognised what it is that we are being given and how much Jesus loves and cares about us, for then our heart would automatically be in the right place.

Essentially Jesus gives himself to us in the Eucharist because he loves us and he wants us to live - and he knows that the journey through life is too hard and too long to be able to do so without him. And, so if we know we need that love and we know we need that life, then who am I or anyone else to tell you that you shouldn't have Holy Communion? As Pope Francis said, the Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine for the weak. In fact, if we think we are perfect and that we don't need it, maybe that's more of a problem.

The way we approach the Eucharist does invite a level of appreciation. That appreciation begins when we think about how we're fed outside of the Eucharist, about the people who work to bring our food from the farm to our plate - farmers, food processing workers, delivery drivers, supermarket workers, cooks. It makes us think about how hard we and others work to put bread on the table and sustain our families. And finally, it makes us think about those who have very little food - so that we who receive Christ in the Eucharist will play our part in building a world where no one is hungry.

Fr Philip Dyer-Perry, Parish Priest at Our Lady of the Rosary church in Staines, west London gave this homily on Corpus Christi Sunday