Every Sunday, even every day we can feed ourselves with the Bread of the Blessing, the Body of Christ! Every Sunday our communities come together to be fed with the Bread that comes down from heaven! Every Sunday each and every catholic Christian is invited to open the heart and mouth to receive the broken Bread on which the very same words of Jesus during the Last Supper were said.

This mystery is the mystery par exellence of our faith. It’s the mystery that gives us the power to love, and joyful in the hope of the Second Coming of the Son of God!

This mystery is at the core of our desires, at the beginning of our plans, and at the end of our ways!

Unfortunalely, even for such a mystery, it can happen that, busy to "do" something for a better world, we forget the great richness we have in our hands, and let go the true nourishment, or the right medicine for our need.

This is what we ought to do: be careful to what is indispensable and necessary, to what sustains our life and that of the poor and the suffering persons we love!

Today we focus our attention on the Gift that Jesus offered us to help us live in union with him and with one another in the right way.

The First Reading takes us to the desert, into a very important moment in the life of the People of God, the moment of the covenant between God and his people. This was sealed with the sheeding of the blood of the animals on the stone altar and sprinkle on the people. This helps us to understand today’s Gospel. Jesus, during his Last Supper, took the cup and said to his disciples: "This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, shed for all"! The blood shed by Jesus on the cross is the blood of the covenant, made not by animal’s blood but by his own, hence of a higher value! This theme is underlined by the author of the Letter to the Hebrews to help us value the gift of the sacrifice of Jesus. At the Last Supper He took the bread and the wine, gifts of higher significance, and through his words and actions, gave them a new significance: this is my body, this is my blood. Today, we welcome these signs from the hands of Jesus, sure that we eat his body and drink his blood, sure of the covenant with him and with the Father, and of the new relationship we have with one another through him.

Helped by his Spirit we are to understand the beauty and the greatness of this gift, we understand that we are truly sanctified, for we are really united with the person of the Son of God. Because of this we are to look for the sacramental purification of all our sins so that we wont find ourselves unworthy to eat the body of Christ. Believing that that bread is the body of Christ, we eat in obedience to him. We cannot make out of Jesus Christ a liar, uniting ourselves with him while we live in explicit dissobbedience to his teachings or disregard the Sacraments of his love. Pope John Paul II, in his new encyclica "Ecclesia de Eucaristia" calls us to this. Particularly he reminds us that if one don’t ask for forgiveness for grave sins through the Sacrament of Reconciliation and "lives in a way contrary to the moral norm" cannot approach to the Sacrament. But the Pope helps us to understand too the various significance of the eucharistic mystery, of the celebration of Mass, of the eucharistic presence even after the celebration, so that we can come to love and value this mystery of the love of God the Father and Jesus!

The Eucharistic Mystery is the most beautiful, deep and real mystery that the Church "owns"! It is continually given to us and offered to the Father by the Church, as much as the Church herself is born and lives by the Eucharist. Because of this, today, we adore Him in a special way. The solemn procession with the Holy Eucharist through the roads of our towns want to be a profession of our faith and a proclamation that Jesus and His real presence are necessary for every person.