Illustration by Libby Kercher

Today’s solemnity gives us the opportunity to reflect on hunger—both physical and spiritual. In honor of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Ann Penick invites us to consider the ways Jesus satisfies our hunger with generous abundance, and how we can do the same for others in love.

June 22, 2025: The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
Genesis 14:18–20
Psalm 110:1–4
1 Corinthians 11:23–26
Luke 9:11–17    

Feeding the Hungry Soul

A reflection by Ann Penick

In today’s first reading from Genesis, the high priest Melchizedek brings bread and wine to Abram, foreshadowing our New Testament covenant and the promise present in the Eucharist. Jesus is the promise of God. We commit to our part of the covenant by proclaiming, “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until you come in glory.”

Upon hearing the second reading proclaimed, you might not realize that Paul was furious when he wrote this letter—1 Corinthians—to the Corinthian Church community because of the way they celebrated the Lord’s Supper. The Corinthian Christians gathered in each other’s homes and often combined the Lord’s Supper with their regular meal. The problem was that the host, typically wealthy, allowed the “first class” guests (usually numbering around nine people), to recline around a low table. They would eat, drink, and even get drunk while the less privileged guests would get less food. Some did not get anything at all because the food and drink ran out. This was unacceptable to Paul, who believed that Christians, when they came together for the Lord’s Supper, were to receive one another as mutual guests.

Paul reminds the Corinthians of the covenantal promise: “This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me… This cup is the New Covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do it in remembrance of me.” Paul wants them to understand their failure to care for one another’s needs in their practice of the Lord’s Supper. He sees this as a scandalous division where there should be unity. In our celebration of the Eucharist, we are to treat each other equally as the One Body of Christ.

In the reading from Luke’s Gospel, the disciples came to Jesus with the request to send people packing in order to go find food. Jesus challenges them, “Give them something to eat yourselves!” The disciples wondered how they were going to do this with five loaves and two fish—surely not everyone could be fed with such meager rations.

The social context of the time is interesting to note. The women and children were not counted in the 5,000—only the men. For our Mediterranean ancestors in the faith, spaces were divided by gender. Both men and women could be in common spaces (e.g. the village square), but never together at the same time, which makes Luke’s report of the 5,000 men very plausible. Jesus’ preaching event was not a huge picnic, but an account of a somewhat chaotic gathering of people that needed logistic direction from Jesus.

The groups of 50 which Jesus directed they gather into were very likely clustered by gender: men and boys past the age of puberty were in some groups; women and children were in other groups. Jesus also would have known that it was the women who usually prepared the meals for their families. In those biblical times, people’s daily food intake was barely enough to subsist on, and with that in mind, he had his disciples gather all the food people brought with them so all those gathered could be fed. Jesus not only ministers to their spiritual needs, but also their physical needs, and at the end, there is food to spare. Think of the Eucharistic images here—Christ considers our needs with the same generous abundance.

What about us in today’s world? What are we starving for? How does Jesus want us to feed the hungry? Hunger can appear in many forms: poverty, food insecurity, ecojustice, incarceration, immigration, prejudice, and bias, among many others. Gerald Darring states that more than 60,000 people will die of hunger on this feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Two-thirds of them will be children. He goes on to say that nearly one in five people worldwide is chronically malnourished—too hungry to lead productive, active lives. Then there is the situation in Gaza, where resources are rapidly dwindling.

Jesus is our living bread. Jesus wants us to be well-fed—spiritually and physically—and wants us to do the same for others. When we receive Jesus’s gift of self in the Eucharist, we choose to be transformed into that same gift for others. We are the visible presence of the Realm of God.

The late Pope Francis, in his homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ in 2019, helps us make sense of this gift:

...In the Body and Blood of Christ, we find his presence, his life given for each of us. He not only gives us help to go forward, but he gives us himself—he makes himself our travelling companion; he enters into our affairs, he visits us when we are lonely, giving us back a sense of enthusiasm. This satisfies us, when the Lord gives meaning to our life, to our darkness, our doubts.

The Eucharist nourishes and encourages us. God not only created the world, but entered into relationship with it and continues to give meaning to our lives. Healing, nourishment, satisfaction, and abundance are all signs of the presence of the Realm of God, and we must do everything we can to make them visible in the world.

Ann Penick is originally from the Chicago area. She now lives in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Ann was ordained a priest with Roman Catholic Womenpriests in 2011. Ann has been serving the faith communities of Dignity Washington and Northern Virginia Dignity as one of their presiders since 2017. She also served on the board of DignityUSA. In addition she has been pastoring a faith community of young families in Washington D.C. since 2013.

‍