Fr. Jorge Miró shares with Exaudi readers his commentary on the  Gospel for Sunday, May 7, 2026,  entitled, “My flesh is true food”

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Today we celebrate the solemnity of Corpus Christi,  which is the  solemn and public feast of the Eucharist , sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ. 

The Lord has fulfilled his promise:  I will be with you always, to the very end of the age.  In the Eucharist, the Lord is truly present . And he is present because we need him. “  Without me you can do nothing,”  Jesus says. And it is true! Without him, we can do nothing.

Pope Leo reminds us that  Christ is God’s answer to humanity’s hunger , because  his body is the bread of eternal life :  “Take and eat of it, all of you!”  Our hungry nature bears the mark of a need that is satisfied by the grace of the Eucharist. Christ is truly a bread that nourishes and never runs out; a bread that can be eaten but is never consumed (cf.  Corpus  2025).

That is why  we need the Eucharist . The Eucharist is not an ornament, nor an add-on that we could do without. No. The Eucharist is a necessity.

To live the Eucharist is  not only to live the moment of Communion, but  to live one’s whole life in the spirit of the  Paschal Mystery . It is  to live one’s whole life  with the Lord .

And  living with the Lord  isn’t just about going to Holy Mass or spending a little time in Adoration. All of that is necessary. But living your whole life with the Lord is so much more.  It also means listening to His Word :  man does not live by bread alone…  We need to welcome the Word and believe in it. The Lord speaks to us through the Word.

To live the Eucharist is also  to live the faith  not in isolation, but  within the Church , which is the Body of Christ. It is to live within a concrete community. And  it is to live the new commandment of love . That is why today we celebrate  National Charity Day.  A Eucharist that does not lead you to love your neighbor, the one whom the Lord has placed beside you, is a Eucharist that has borne no fruit.

Living the  Paschal Mystery  also means living each day doing God’s will , denying oneself and leaving behind worldly fashions to follow Jesus.

To live the  Paschal Mystery  is to take up your cross every day . To live the  Paschal Mystery  is also  to experience the presence of the Risen Jesus Christ in the midst of your life . To experience that you are not alone, but that the Lord, who loves you, is with you every day and makes all things new through the gift of his Spirit.

And then your whole life becomes Eucharistic .  You can live  not trapped in complaining and murmuring, but  overflowing with  blessing  and  praise .  You can live as we sing in today’s Psalm:  Glorify the Lord, Jerusalem; praise your God, Zion…

Corpus  Christi  is  characterized by the  tradition of carrying the Blessed Sacrament in procession . By carrying the Eucharist through the streets,  we want Jesus to walk where we walk, to live where we live . Our world, our very existence, must be transformed into his temple. It is a  sign of our journey toward Christ,  as Pope Leo X reminded us (cf.  Corpus Christi  2025).  Together, shepherds and flock, we are nourished by the Blessed Sacrament, we adore him, and we carry him through the streets.  In doing so, we offer him to the eyes, the conscience, and the hearts of the people. To the hearts of believers, so that they may believe more firmly, and to the hearts of non-believers, so that they may reflect on the hunger within their souls and on the bread that can satisfy it.

We need  to participate in the Eucharist every Sunday . Sunday is the  Lord’s Day , a day we must  consecrate  and  dedicate  to the Lord: it is a  day of  rest,  of  encountering the Lord  in his  Word  and in the  Eucharist,  of  sharing time  with family and friends, of  living charity,  living the new commandment of love.

We must  also discover prayer before the Eucharist , visiting Jesus Christ present in the Tabernacle.  Adoration   is fundamental in the Christian life , and prayer before the Tabernacle is a moment of special intensity and strength in the spiritual life .

Come, Holy Spirit!