“This is my body,
which is for you.”
Reading: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
As usual, Bruce Springsteen said it best: “Everybody’s got a hungry heart.”
That’s the raw, human truth behind today’s feast of Corpus Christi. Deep down, every one of us is hungry… for food, sure, but more so for love, for closeness, for union, for communion. It’s the ache at the center of the soul, and no snack in your pantry can fix it. Oh, we’ll try all sorts of things to fill it up—money, success, hooking up, controlling our image, numbing out—but the heart remains restless, because only one thing can satisfy our deepest longing: the mutual indwelling of lover and beloved, that “great mystery” where “two become one” (cf. Eph 5:32; Gen 2:24).
On this feast, God invites us to look honestly at that hunger inside us and ask: What am I really hungry for? And maybe even more bravely: How can that hunger be satisfied?
Today’s readings suggest the outline of an answer. First, we see Melchizedek, that mystery priest-king who haunts the edges of Genesis, blessing Abram with bread and wine. He’s a distant shadow of Jesus, the Priest-King to come, who will bless not just one faithful man but the whole messy human family—and not just with bread and wine, but with the gift of His own body and blood.
Then we hear Paul repeated those words Jesus whispered to His friends, the night before He died: “This is my body, which is for you” (1 Cor 11:24). He didn’t say, Here’s a snack; don’t forget me. He said, Take me. All of me. Let me be yours, and you be mine.
Last of all, in the Gospel, we get the big public sign: five thousand people sprawled out on the grass like sheep at a picnic, munching on bread with wide eyes and—maybe—widening hearts. It’s easy to think the real miracle here is the multiplication of the loaves, but look closer. The true wonder is the Man behind the bread, the heart aching to feed them with Himself. If you listen closely, you can already hear the echo of His words at the Last Supper: “This is my body, which is for you.”
This is the eros, if I may be so bold, at the heart of the Eucharist. Jesus’s burning desire was never just to inspire us with fresh moral teaching or teach us to behave. It’s to be so close to us that His life mingles with ours. He starts by feeding this motley crowd on the hillside, then narrows it down to the upper room, where He passes bread and wine to His closest friends—all men, leaning on one other’s shoulders around a common table, sharing secrets, whispered promises, and the warmth of each other’s presence. Then that intimacy explodes outward again, timeless, infinite, to feed you and me today.
The mystics call this mystery the beating heart of Christian life. The Eucharist is a kind of “one flesh union” between Christ the Bridegroom and the Church, His Bride. It’s a marriage—or at least, that’s the closest words can come to describing the mystery.
But we’re all friends here, so let’s be honest. The mystics’ favorite analogy gets very queer, very quickly. How else am I to understand what happens when I, a man, receive the Body of a man into my own body? Some theologians insist the human soul must be “feminine” in order to receive the love of God. Fine. Let them. Personally, I no longer see the need to box this mystery in with gendered clichés. Every one of us—male, female, trans, nonbinary—has the capacity to desire and to be desired, to give and to receive love, to be the beloved of God and to become bread for the world.
I’m more interested in another question. What’s really at stake here for us, as LGBTQ+ Catholics, on the feast of Corpus Christi? We who have so often been told the deepest hunger of our hearts is shameful, our longing disordered, our bodies somehow unworthy of the holiness of God?
What’s at stake… is everything.
Corpus Christi insists: Your hunger is holy. Your longing is not a flaw. It’s a doorway to deeper union with God. In the Eucharist, divine eros meets our hungry hearts as He gives His very Body to be taken into yours. We’re not just here as guests at a potluck. We are invited as God’s beloved to a scandalously intimate feast.
And Jesus is not content to give us a bite to eat and send us on our way. No, He wants to dwell in us exactly as we are, to mingle His life with ours until we are so bound up in Him that we become His Body for the world.
Of course, we get to say yes or no. He never forces Himself. He just keeps offering, whispering again and again through the gifts of bread and wine: “This is my body, which is for you.”
I think the invitation of this feast day is to come to the table hungry. Come exactly as you are. Bring your contradictions, your secrets, your raw and tender places. Let yourself taste a love that feeds even the parts of yourself you thought He’d never want to see.
And know this: The Eucharist alone may not satisfy your heart’s desire. Not fully. But perhaps it wasn’t meant to. More and more, I believe this food is meant to increase our hunger. It teaches us, every time we receive it, to go and do likewise: to give ourselves away as Christ does, to learn to let ourselves be loved, and to dare to love others with the same scandalous, self-emptying tenderness of God.
So come, “taste and see.”
You belong at this table.
And maybe you’ll discover that your hungry heart is not just aching to be filled…
It’s made to be given away.
Reflection Questions:
Where do you feel your hunger most sharply today?
How might receiving the Body of Christ speak to that hunger?
If this hunger really is holy, how might you live differently this week?