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Reflection on the Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

Posted on June 22, 2025, by Eleanor Craig SL

Genesis 14:18-20        1 Corinthians 11:23-26        Luke 9:1-17

Today’s Gospel tells us in plain words about God’s world, that is, about our world. Despite all appearances, regardless of the most distressing breaking news, our world is suffused with God’s powerful creative work and with God’s love embodied in Christ.

As I reflected on this feast of Corpus Christi, I found my thoughts forming as a poem or a song, like the traditional Sequence for the feast. In light of last night’s bombing of Iran, this song rings as a challenge to our trust in God.

Let us celebrate the real presence of God in our world.

Let us sing of the presence of our God Creator

Embedded in millions of leaves, glistening in the dawn in the nearest trees, breathing for all creation;

Feeding each bird in the trees, each lily in the field, each miniscule microbe beneath;

Let us celebrate the real presence of our life-giving Creator.

Let us sing of the presence in God’s world,

Our world, of the Christ, the Body of God’s love:

Christ, God’s Primordial Word – Let the earth be and all that lives upon it

Christ, God’s Perfect Image – Let them be man and woman

Christ, God’s Faithful People – I will be your God and you will be my people

Christ, Jesus of Nazareth – This is my beloved, hear him.

Let us sing of the real presence of God’s Christ, 

In the spirited believers of every faith and time.

Let us remind one another daily that we are 

God’s presence, the Body of Christ

For one another in our joys and in our sorrows

Teaching God’s kingdom, healing God’s wounded.

We are God’s presence, the Body of Christ with our near neighbors

Building the kingdom of God, healing one another’s hurts,

Guiding the children.

We are the real presence of Christ for them 

And they are the real presence of Christ for us.

We are God’s presence, the Body of Christ withthose farther neighbors
Shattered across exploding fields, mired in social hatreds.
We are the Body of Christ offered as nourishment to those
Hungering for crumbs from our tables.
We are the Body of Christ offered as healing balm to those
despairing of peace, devoid of dignity, dying for compassion.
We are the real presence of Christ for them
And they are the real presence of Christ for us.

Let us give glory, thanks and praise for God’s Christ
Present in our works, guiding our ways,
God’s real presence in our world.

Eleanor Craig SL

Sister Eleanor Craig SL, Loretto Community Historian, served as director of the Loretto Heritage Center Archives and Museum from 2012-2020. While beginning her Loretto ministry as a math teacher, she soon developed a way of teaching life lessons through storytelling and adventure traveling, including, as Eleanor once put it, leading more wagon trains along the old western trails than any mountain man. She is guided by an inner passion for the natural world, for history in its natural context, and for teaching beyond the walls of a school. Now into her 80th decade, Eleanor is still avidly listening, reading and writing, and telling true stories.