They all ate and were satisfied. With these words, Luke’s Gospel account of the feeding of the five thousand—a Eucharistic event, as the selection of this Gospel makes clear—reveals a truth about the sacrament we receive and celebrate in a particular way in today’s feast of Corpus Christi. Or at least, it points to a reality that we pray to be made true in each one of us more and more.
Physically speaking, what we receive under the forms of bread and wine is next to nothing, a little wafer of bread and a tiny sip of wine mixed with water. And yet just as Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish that were vastly insufficient for the crowd, said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples so that all ate and were satisfied, so we know by faith, that is, by the interior teaching of the Holy Spirit, that what we celebrate and receive in the Eucharist is far more than we could desire: the Lord’s body that is for us and the new covenant in his blood. What more could one want than to receive the Lord himself: body, blood, soul, and divinity? What more could satisfy the human heart than to welcome the living bread that came down from heaven, the Son of God, under our roof?
Today in our prayer and worship, let us marvel at this wonder of the Lord’s gracious love. And let us ask for the grace to yearn more and more for the only food which truly satisfies, which is God’s own self-gift to us.