We’ve just heard Jesus telling his disciples that they will have to ‘eat of the flesh of the Son of Man’ and ‘drink of his blood’. Incredible! Indeed, if we read on through the next few verses of St John’s Gospel we’ll see that at this point many of Jesus’ disciples return to their former way of life and no longer accompany him, because they can’t accept what he is saying.

So how do we feel when Jesus says that anyone who eats this bread will live forever and that this bread is his flesh? And what of his claim that it is eternal life that he is offering, with the promise that whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood remains in him and he in them?

Today, which is the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, we celebrate the gift of Christ in the blessed sacrament of the Eucharist. We believe the Son of God becomes truly present in the bread and wine. When the priest consecrates the bread and wine, using Jesus’ words, they are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. ‘Take this, all of you, and eat of it; this is my Body, which will be given up for you’. ‘Take this all of you and drink from it; for this is the chalice of my blood’.

Maybe we do not need to fully understand but, rather, to experience this: to open our hearts and enter into the mystery and allow it to transform us. We are to have life; we are to receive God’s love flowing into us!

Have a look at this print, titled ‘In Memoriam’, a contemporary painting of the Last Supper – the final meal Jesus ate with his friends before he was arrested and crucified. While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body’. Then he took a cup and, after giving thanks, he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins’. The beautiful original by Andrew White is huge! Twelve foot long! Don’t worry if you cannot get a good look today – it will be left here in the chapel for the week.

Look at Jesus; look at his friends. Who might you be in the painting? Who would you like to be? The artist said that the painting is less about the disciples of 2,000 years ago, more about us today and about Christ with us. It reminds us that Christ wants to invite us all, wherever we come from, whatever we have done, to gather around his table.

So, as we are gathered around the altar here today, we are Christ’s friends, his disciples, and we can be changed by God’s grace into love incarnate, into sons and daughters of God. We, like the bread and wine, can be transformed and can live God’s love in our lives, because Jesus was the Son of God, absolute love made flesh.

There is a wonderful by a Benedictine monk, Anselm Gruen. It is called Images of Jesus and in the section entitled ‘Jesus the Bread’ he writes: ‘There in the bread Jesus gives us his own body, which he sacrificed for us. So the bread in the Eucharist becomes the sign of the love with which he loved us to the end on the cross.’

By eating this love incarnate in the Eucharistic bread, we discover that Jesus himself is the bread that satisfies our hunger. Jesus says: ‘Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.’ Eternal life doesn’t primarily mean life after death but a life in which time and eternity already coincide now; in which heaven and earth touch each other, and God and human beings are reconciled with one another.

Sometimes on receiving the Eucharistic bread I’ve had the experience of everything coming together as one. I sense God’s infinite love flowing through my body. Now there’s real life in me, eternal life, a life that can’t be destroyed even by death, because it is steeped in the divine life and the divine love. How beautiful!

So, as we prepare to receive Our Lord Jesus in Holy Communion, we should each listen for God calling us by name. Hear God call you by name, too, and saying: ‘Come! Come! Come and let my love flow into you. Because I love you so much and I want to be with you.’