Can you remember the first time that you ate different food? Maybe you can remember the first time that you had sushi. Or perhaps you can recall the first time that you ate deer meat. Or maybe you can remember the first time you had Ritter’s frozen custard. Sometimes you have to go out on a limb and try new things, just to give it a chance. Those first-time occasions stick out in our minds because more than likely, they determined whether we were ever going to have sushi, or venison, or frozen custard again. I can remember very vividly the first-time that I ever ate Chinese food. We never had Chinese food when I was growing up. So the first-time ever in my life that I ate Chinese food was actually when I was a theology student in Rome, Italy. So I guess you could say that I had Italian Chinese food. It sure was different. I remember being scared to death that they were going to make us eat with chopsticks, because I thought I’d never get any food in my mouth. Besides, how in the world can you eat rice with chopsticks? No wonder, the Chinese are all so small. Man, was I relieved to see silverware on the table! But you know, it wasn’t bad. It was kind of a nice change of pace. It was different. I still like to have Chinese food once in awhile. But I definitely remember having it for the first time. Sometimes, you’ve got to try something new.

When the Israelites were in the desert with Moses, they were starving to death. The people were getting angry at Moses and wanted to go back to Egypt. The Book of Deuteronomy tells us in our first reading, that God took care of His people. God gave them manna in the wilderness. Now, this was a food that was unknown to their fathers. They didn’t even have cornflakes back then. So God was doing something completely new. They’d wake up in the morning, and they would collect all these flakes of bread that would be on the ground. In this way, God saved His people again in the desert, with this bread from Heaven. But this was a new thing. Nobody had ever eaten anything like this before. There had to have been a leap of faith when they tried it for the first time, like, is this really going to work? And work it did, as God took care of His people on their way to the Promised Land.

At the Last Supper, Jesus also did something entirely new. He took regular, old, unleavened bread and plain old grape wine, and He changed them substantially into His Body and Blood, which would be sacrificed the next day. Nobody had ever heard of anything like this before the Last Supper. Like the manna, nobody could have possibly imagined what God was doing here. And yet it was this Bread, which wasn’t really bread at all, that became the food of Christians on their way home to Heaven. We celebrate the Holy Eucharist today as the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Christ - Corpus Christi.

And just like for the Israelites in the desert, and just as it was for the Apostles at the Last Supper, this food from God becomes an act of Faith for all of us. We’ve got to trust. We’ve got to believe. We’ve got to know with our hearts and our minds, that this is God taking care of us today, just as He did the Israelites, and just as He did the Apostles. This Body and This Blood keep us nourished for our journey. They keep us together as Church. They unite us, and strengthen us, and help us to become more like Jesus. And yet, without that leap of Faith, without that trust, well, we might as well just walk away.

In John’s Gospel, many did walk away, you know? It was way too much. We hear how shocking what Jesus was saying really was, in our Gospel today. It was too much for the Jewish people to handle. There were many that agreed with everything else that Jesus was teaching, and yet, when He started talking about giving them His Body and His Blood, it was too much. They walked away. And Jesus didn’t stop them. Jesus didn’t run after them and re-explain it in more politically correct terms. Jesus didn’t water down what He was doing. He spoke the truth. He did the truth. And He let those who couldn’t handle it walk away.

What about us as we come here on this Feast Day? What do we believe? In order to really experience the power of what we share at this Altar in just a few minutes, we too need to make a leap of Faith. We’ve got to believe. We might not be able to fully understand, but we’ve got to be able to believe and trust. God has never let His people down. Not in His promises. Not in His actions. And certainly not in the food that He gives on our journey. Maybe we need to go back to the first-time that we ate this spiritual food, Jesus’ Body and Blood. Our First Communion was a monumental day in our lives. Let us recapture that Faith and purity of that day. And let us remember, that each Communion is no less important.

May God bless us on this Feast Day… Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… AMEN !!!

St. Maria Goretti … Pray for us !!!