HOMILY FOR MASS FOR CORPUS CHRISTI THE SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 22 JUNE 2025
There was great joy last week when Pope Leo announced that the first ‘millennial’ saint, Carlo Acutis, will be canonised on 7th September. Born in London to Italian parents in 1991, he grew up as children do. He loved soccer, pets, video games and Spiderman. As we oldies know, when you can’t work the tech, ask a kid to show you how, and sure enough Carlo had great computer skills. But behind his seemingly ordinary teenage exterior, there was something less usual: a deep faith and extraordinary devotion to the eucharistic Lord.
At his first Holy Communion, aged seven, he told his Mum he wanted “always to be united to Jesus.”[1] He attended Mass in his hometown of Milan every day he could, so as to receive Communion often, referring to it as his “highway to heaven.”[2] He applied his tech know-how to creating a website cataloguing 130 or so well-documented and Church-approved Eucharistic miracles and ensured it was available in multiple languages so the word would get out to the world.
The first one he catalogued went back to the eighth century. A Basilian monk in the town of Lanciano in central Italy struggled with doubts about the Real Presence of Christ in the sacrament. Yet one day when he uttered the words of consecration over the elements—“This is my body, this is my blood”—he saw the bread change into living flesh and the wine into fresh blood. These specimens exist to this very day and pathologists have confirmed that they are human heart flesh and human blood of the same AB blood type found on the Shroud of Turin, both without any chemical preservatives.[3]
Another miracle documented by young Carlo was from his own lifetime. In Argentina a consecrated host was dropped on the floor during the distribution of Holy Communion and was reverently placed in the tabernacle to dissolve in a bowl of water. When a Eucharistic minister inspected it a few days later, it looked like flesh and blood. Pathologists were consulted and again found human cardiac tissue which mysteriously was not decomposing. The then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis, judged the miracle credible.[4]
Carlo’s project of spreading the Gospel and especially devotion to Christ in the Eucharist was cut short when he was diagnosed with advanced Leukemia in 2006, an illness that would claim his life at the tender age of 15. His faith endured through that ordeal and he offered his suffering for the Pope and Church, telling his mother that, since the Incarnation, death is no longer the end of life but the passage to eternal life.
In such a short life, Carlo was able to serve God and the Church as an on-line evangelist. He was able to draw many people to the Eucharist through his website. And he was able to show us all, including our young people making their First Holy Communion today, that whatever your age and gifts, you can help build God’s kingdom.
In our Gospel today (Lk 9:11-17), five thousand people in 32 AD join the Galilee Walk With Christ; this afternoon perhaps 20,000 will join the Sydney Walk With Christ 2025. The first one was in a deserted place without food trucks and cafes nearby and the ever-so-practical disciples urged the Master to dismiss the crowd to go looking for provisions. But the Lord had other plans. He multiplied five paltry loaves and two fish so there was enough to feed everyone, with twelve basketsful left over! It was a miracle, then, like His turning gallons of water to fine wine at Cana and His engineering the miraculous draught of fish, miracles not just of God’s nurture of His hungry people but also of His bounty. God doesn’t want us just to survive but to thrive. But there’s more going on here than just another sign of unmeasured generosity: in this first ‘quasi-eucharistic’ miracle, Jesus prefigured something greater to come.
The miracle of the loaves and fishes made such an impact it was recorded six times in the Gospels.[5] With John’s account we get Jesus’ wonderful teaching about the Bread that He will give that is His own flesh for the life of the world (Jn 6:25-71). But in today’s version from Luke, we can also glimpse the Mass. We notice that before He feeds the crowd, Jesus instructs them at length; the Word is broken before the Bread, as at Mass. Then Jesus has the apostles divide the multitude into more intimate groups for the celebration—you might say it is the very first suggestion of dividing the Church into parishes. Next, taking the elements, Jesus looks up to heaven, blesses and gives thanks over them. Then, He breaks them and gives them to the disciples to distribute. And finally, He has the remainder reverently collected up. So, something very Mass-shaped was already happening there in the region of Bethsaida.
Today’s epistle is the first record of Christ instituting the Eucharist “on the night he was betrayed” (1Cor 11:23-26). Paul tells us that “The Lord Jesus took bread, gave thanks, said the blessing, broke the bread, and said, ‘This is my body, which will be given up for you.’… In a similar way, when supper was ended, he took the chalice, saying, ‘This is my blood, the blood of the new covenant. Do this in memory of me.’” So, when priests ‘do this’, taking bread and wine, consecrating and eucharisting, Jesus says those transforming words and works His signs and wonders yet again. Not by multiplying the elements, which would be remarkable enough, but something much more wonderful: transforming the elements into His Flesh and Blood, His Body and Soul, His Humanity and Divinity—all wrapped up in the appearances of bread and wine so we will not be intimidated but receptive. And what has been so wonderfully transfigured then transforms those who receive it, into the Body of Christ, the Church; into living tabernacles of the Real Presence of Christ; into beings destined for eternal life.
The miracle of the loaves satisfied physical hunger for a day. The miracle of the Eucharist satisfies the deepest hunger of the human heart and for all eternity. Through the action of sanctifying grace, we are enabled to live and love as Christ did, sacrificially, offering our joys and sufferings with His, for the salvation of the world. Young Carlo Acutis knew this well and famously said that: “If we face the sun, we get a suntan, but if we stand before the Eucharistic Christ, we get holy”, we become saints.[6]
And so my young friends, who will today receive the miracle-food that is Jesus for the first time: show us by your faith, devotion and sharing that like Carlo you are apostles of the Eucharist. Come back as he did, week after week, to receive the greatest of God’s gifts so you might be transformed yourself into a true gift of God!
Word after Holy Communion
It has been a joy to celebrate the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ with you today! Since our last celebration of this great feast, we have had the exciting news that Sydney will host the International Eucharistic Congress in 2028. It is our hope that the Holy Father, Pope Leo, will attend, along with all the Catholics of Sydney and many others. You might say our annual Walk With Christ is a dress rehearsal for that. It commences today with a festival in Martin Place from 1pm; followed by the Corpus Christi procession at 2:30pm sharp from the corner of Martin Place and Pitt Street; and concluding with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament in the cathedral square. This Walk With Christ is a beautiful, public celebration of our faith in Christ’s real presence and its power to save, and so I would love to see you there! And so would our soon-to-be sainted Carlo Acutis! So would our Eucharistic Lord Himself!
Ferverino for Benediction After “Walk with Christ”
St Mary’s Cathedral Forecourt, Sydney, Corpus Christi, 22 June 2025
The saying “Be yourself—everyone else is taken” is attributed to Oscar Wilde. The simple yet compelling message resonates with modernity’s emphasis on individuality, picking our own path through life and being our authentic selves. Made an anthem for the whole of life, it means we are all atoms, bouncing off each other as rivals or connecting transactionally; that our freedom must as far as practicable be unhampered by claims of nature, tradition, law, community, even truth; that we should not follow the crowd, but make our theme-song and funeral hymn Frank Sinatra’s “I did it my way”.
But can that be squared with Christian faith? In the Gospels, Jesus offers a rather different vision of what it is to be human, free and fulfilled. Rather than each charting a solo course, Jesus invites us to exercise our individuality in communion, to trade personal ambition for mission, to walk not alone but with Him and the Church, the ‘synod’ of fellow-travellers.
Jesus’ first words to His apostles in the Gospel go straight to the point: “What do you seek?” (Jn 1:38) It’s the question you were asked at your baptism, when first you met Christ, and your parents and godparents answered for you. What is it you most want, what are you after? Wealth, power, pleasure? Social approval, influence, success? What is any of that really for and will any of that, by itself, make you truly fulfilled?
Look deep into your own heart today, and hear Jesus ask you again “What do you seek?” Many people search in all the wrong places for direction and for happiness. They try various experiences, skip from one relationship to another. They compromise their ideals and reinvent themselves. Still, they are dissatisfied, disoriented, even depressed. Often they get hurt along the way.
“What do you seek?” your Creator asks you. Deep in your soul you may answer: Lord, I want more than fleeting pleasure, temporary happiness. I need meaning, purpose, fulfilment. Real relationships. Good character. I want to write with my life an autobiography I can be proud of. To make a contribution. And to live beyond the grave.
Most of that I can’t do on my own. “I did it my way” won’t cut the mustard. I need others to shape and support me. And I need your help Lord, I need You. As St Augustine concluded after years of searching, “You made us for Yourself. O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”[7] I’m as weak as the clay from which you made me Lord, but as noble as the breath you put in me: make of me all I could and should be.
Maybe your answer to Jesus is something like that. But whatever it is, if it’s a Christian answer, it must be receptive to Jesus’ next words “Come, follow me””—not “Strike out on your own,” “Seek your own path,” “Do it your way,” but “Follow me”.[8] It is no casual suggestion, no flippant offer. It’s a radical call to let go of the wilfulness modernity fans into flames, shake off every obstacle to Christ’s mission and join Him in it.
That’s no easy thing. It means leaving behind the fishing nets of our ambitions, preferences, pet projects, and striking a course that Jesus says will sometimes feel like a via crucis (e.g. Mt 16:24). It means embracing ideals that put us at odds with some of our fellows and with the drift of the culture. Whether it’s dying to self or risking rejection by others, we have to be ready to lose our lives to save them (Mt 16:25). To Walk With Christ is to join a procession—this year of perhaps 20,000 people—following Him, not each picking our own goals and routes. As Paul said, “It’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).
“What do you seek?” “Come, follow me.” Jesus’ next words to us are “Repent and believe the Gospel!” (Mt 4:17)[9] Don’t just walk the walk of Christians. Know the why of the walk and make it your own. Discipleship is not just doing Christian things, but being and believing. It’s a new identity, one shared with 1.4 billion Catholics and a billion other Christians in the world today.
It’s a shared identity that means you willingly go public about your faith, give witness as you did today, become “fishers of men” (Mt 4:19; Mk 1:17), bringing others with you, not just once a year on the streets of Sydney, but every day in your families, schools, workplaces, friendship groups. You do that in your contributions to culture, economy and polity, in reaching out to protect and serve the sick, poor and dying, the elderly, unborn and outsiders. Receiving the Eucharist into yourself at Holy Communion, you become a living tabernacle, a human monstrance, ready to bring Christ to the world.
In three years from now, our whole city will be a tabernacle for the Eucharistic Lord. We must prepare ourselves to host the International Eucharistic Congress as a great spiritual revival for us all, by recommitting ourselves to the Eucharistic Lord in our personal faith and ideals, prayer and devotions, and outreach to others in charity. Then we will be beacons for all those crying out for hope, direction, love. And in the end people will sing of us not “I did it my way” but “She did it Christ’s way!”
[1] ‘Who was Carlo Acutis?’ CatholicWitness.org 15 October 2020; Julia Gomez, ‘God’s influencer: Carlo Acutis named first millennial saint following 2006 death’, USA Today 1 July 2024.
[2] Jennifer Terranova, ‘The Eucharist: “Highway to Heaven” by Carlo Acutis’, Omnes Magazine, 21 July 2023.
[3] Real Presence Eucharistic Education and Adoration Association, ‘Eucharistic miracle of Lanciano, Italy, 750 A.D.’ https://www.miracolieucaristici.org/en/liste/scheda_b.html?nat=italia&wh=lanciano&ct=Lanciano,%20750%20D.C; John Flader, ‘The Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano’, The Catholic Leader, 10 November 2013.
[4] Real Presence Eucharistic Education and Adoration Association, ‘Eucharistic miracles of Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1992-1994-1996’, https://www.miracolieucaristici.org/en/liste/ scheda_c.html?nat=argentina&wh=buenosaires&ct= Buenos%20Aires,%201992-1994-1996; Magis Center, ‘The Eucharistic miracle Pope Francis witnessed in Buenos Aires’, Magis Center 19 April 2024 https://www.magiscenter.com/blog/the-eucharistic-miracle-pope-francis; Robert Spitzer, ‘Exploring miracles: Mary, saints, and the Holy Eucharist’, Magis Center 15 May 2025https://www.magiscenter.com/ blog/exploring-miracles-mary-saints-and-the-holy-eucharist
[5] Mt 14:13-21; 15:29-39; Mk 6:30-44; 8:1-13; Lk 9:10-17; Jn 6:1-15.
[6] ‘18 inspiring quotes by Carlo Acutis’ Archdiocese of Westminster 12 October 2020 https://youth.rcdow.org.uk/voices/ carlo-acutis-quotes/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[7] St Augustine, Confessions Bk 1, paragraph 1.
[8] Mt 4:19; 8:22; 9:9; 10:38; 16:24; 19:28; Mk 1:17,20; 2:14; 8:34; 10:21; Lk 5:27; 9:23,59,61; 14:27; 18:22; Jn 1:38,43; 8:12; 10:27; 12:26; 13:36; 21:19.
[9] Cf. Mk 1:15; Lk 4:43; cf. Mt 3:2; 24:14; Acts 2:38.
INTRODUCTION TO MASS FOR CORPUS CHRISTI
THE SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 22 JUNE 2025
Welcome to Sydney’s St Mary’s Basilica for the Solemn Mass of Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Today we celebrate Christ’s promise that He would be with us till the end of time—a promise fulfilled in His real presence in the Holy Eucharist, the source and summit of the Christian life. In nourishing us spiritually with His Body and Blood, we grow closer to Him and more like Him.
This morning, I’m delighted to be giving First Holy Communion to Ahliya, Chris, Christina, Ethan, Harley, Isabella, Isabelle, Jethro, Knox, Luca, Madeliene, Marcus, Milina, Grace and Kesler: a very warm welcome to each of you and to your families as they witness Jesus coming to you in a new way, giving His substance to be part of yours, His life to be yours.
To everyone present here on this joyous feast, both regulars and visitors, a very warm welcome to you all!
