When asked which food you could you go without, many people reply “never bread.” Bread is a form of identity, significant in history, religion, culture, influenced by geography, grain availability and taste, ranging from tortillas, flat bread to sour dough. Bread is a mainstay in the diet of mankind and has been for millennia, symbolizing nourishment and life. 

With industrialization, breadmaking went from a handmade craft to a mechanized stable. The first loaf of sliced bread was sold by the Chillicothe Missouri Baking Company on July 7, 1928, hence, the cliché, “it’s the best thing since sliced bread” came into being.

In June, the Church recognizes and honours the Body of Christ. The history of the feast of Corpus Christi goes back to the Orvieto cathedral when in 1268, to the astonishment of a doubting priest, the consecrated host began to bleed. Transubstantiation or the Real Presence is one of the greatest mysteries of our faith. Pope Urban IV recognized the significance and authenticity of this miracle by establishing the feast of Corpus Christi. 

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Today we continue to celebrate the enduring power of the Real Presence which captured the heart of young Carlo Acutis in Milan, Italy. It has not been a year since the canonization of this 15-year-old who died of leukemia in 2006. In My Son Carlo, his mother, Antonia Solzano Acutis, offers an almost reverent gaze upon her son’s musings on the Holy Eucharist. In his notebooks Carlo expresses what the Eucharist “is,” not what it represents, such is the generosity of God’s supernatural power available to us through it. 

His writings give us a view into the mystery of the Eucharist from his perspective not as a scholar like St. Thomas Aquinas, but as a teenager in the modern world. The words and contemplation from such a young person should spark an awakening in the reader.

There are six lines in Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel that really made an impression on Carlo. After Jesus fed the thousands, by blessing five barley loaves and two small fish (John 6:5-13), He left and went across the lake. The people followed Him and Jesus continued to teach them. Carlo tells us that what Jesus taught them was like a lightning strike on a clear day, when He said, “I am the Bread of life” (John 6:35). Furthermore, in John 6:53-59, Jesus taught that you must eat my Body and drink my Blood if you want to live eternally. 

Jesus is pushing the envelope here, so to speak, because these words are difficult. However, Carlo writes that these six verses are a centre of gravity, they are ultra magnetic. From beyond, they are six verses regarding the way to eternity. This Bread of Life, this Holy Communion is not symbolic, not poetic, not sentimental. It is the reality. It is intimate. Jesus talks of life, promises life and gives life. That life is through the Eucharist. 

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Going without food weakens the body and long-term hunger and famine lead to starvation and death. The spirit is also weakened without the Holy Eucharist, even risking a disconnect with God.  

Carlo says the Holy Eucharist offers a means to transfigure us and make us more like Jesus. His divine-human reality is placed at our complete, total, global disposal. It provides a bond with Him that leads to eternity — “Jesus and us. Jesus with us. Jesus for us. Jesus in us.” He says an interpersonal relationship is created. Our living organism is intimately bonded to Jesus Christ. And in hiding Himself in the Eucharist He gives us all of Himself to help us realize our sanctification. 

It is little wonder that Carlo compiled a list of Eucharistic miracles, his way of educating the world about the mystery and reality of God through Jesus in the form of bread and wine. The Eucharist enables us to keep God in our mind, in our heart and on our lips and strengthens us as we make our way to our home with God forever. It is a promise. 

But like so many things that are easy to access, the body of Christ, offered every day, can be taken for granted. The meaning and gift of the Holy Eucharist, Corpus Christi is astonishment to us once we recognize what it means and what it offers. Carlo writes that there is nothing in the entire universe that can compare to the power and the transformation that can be accessed by human beings through the Eucharist. 

The thoughts shared by Carlo about the Eucharist are anything but mundane, leaving one with a renewed interest in the gift of the body of Christ, our bread of life. 

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Just as bread is considered to be the staff of life and essential to physical life, so also is the Body of Christ sustenance and essential to spiritual life. Christ did not leave us empty. 

“And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Matthew 28: 20).