One of the things that I love most when I’m eating is a good loaf of Italian bread. What’s a good loaf of Italian bread? In my opinion, it’s bread that has a nice crust on the outside, a hard, chewy crust on the outside, and it’s nice and warm and soft on the inside. That, with a nice salad drizzled with some good olive oil and some red wine vinegar, that and that crusty loaf of bread, that could be my meal and I would be very happy.

The gospel this Sunday is all about bread. However, this bread, as special as it is, isn’t made in a bakery or in a home kitchen. This bread is unique. It’s more than just a staple for life. It is life. Our gospel today, we hear that Jesus is the bread, the living bread. In fact, He is the bread that we need to live forever. We also come to understand today that this bread, Jesus, is our strength for choosing to be who He transforms us into, the living body of Christ for others. Talk about a lot to digest.

How are we to make sense of all of this? It’s easy for us to turn off our televisions after Mass at home or to walk out of Mass in whatever church is our local church. We just leave and go on with our day, with our lives, but today, this feast reminds us, in order for this to make sense and to be relevant for us, we have to be willing to go forward and to practice the self-giving example of Jesus. If we are to become the real presence of the body of Christ in His church, then the challenge is for us to ask ourselves, “Where might I need to practice a little more kindness, a little more charity, have a little bit more of a positive and hopeful attitude, and the hardest of all, to be a little more giving?”

Why think about it? Why care about it? Why even practice this self-giving example of Jesus? This solemnity of the body and blood of Christ reminds us, when we eat this bread, when we become this bread, the life that this bread gives is eternal.