Pastoral Letter to the Priests, Religious, and People of the Archdiocese of Sydney on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ 2026
“Source and summit of the Christian life”—so the Second Vatican Council described the Eucharist (Lumen Gentium, 11), and so the Church has believed from the beginning. On this great solemnity of Corpus Christi 2026, and as we look forward to the International Eucharistic Congress in Sydney in 2028, we celebrate that mystery from which the Church draws her life (St John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 1): that under the simple signs of bread and wine, the Lord Jesus gives His flesh and blood, His body and soul, His humanity and divinity, everything He is, all given for us.
But what does it mean for God to share Himself with us? He shares His love with us, so that we can commune with the three-personed God and His saints; so He enables us to love and serve our families and friends, our fellows, even strangers. He shares His life with us, as we experience Him moving our hearts, provoking and strengthening, converting and consoling; so He shapes our character, gracing us to be more and to do more than we could ever alone. He shares His truth with us, as we perceive Him in creation and receive Him in revelation; so His wisdom enlightens our minds, directs our wills, and inspires our actions including our mission to humanity.
God shares His love and life and truth with us. But we are not just spirits, minds, wills. We are bodily beings. And so the God who would share everything with us, took our flesh (Jn 1:14), joining in every aspect of our human bodily lives except sin (Heb 4:15), and offering Himself to us not just as an idea or feeling or inspiration but as a person, whom we can receive even bodily. He pours His grace over us and into us through the waters of Baptism, the anointing with holy oil in Confirmation, the one-flesh union of Holy Matrimony, above all in the Holy Eucharist, where the very Body and Blood of Christ are received into our bodies and souls.
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