God with us: sermon on Corpus Christi

By a Dominican Friar   |   18 June 2025

“This is the bread that came down from heaven.”

If there is one thing that the Scriptures teach us, it is that almighty God desires to be with His people. Thus, in the Old Testament, we read about a person called Wisdom. Wisdom was the name given to the second person of the Blessed Trinity, before He became incarnate as Jesus Christ. Wisdom describes how during creation He was with the Father, forming all things, “playing before him at all times.” But He adds, “My delights were to be with the children of men.”

Accordingly, when the first man and first women were formed and placed in the garden of Eden, we find that God in some mysterious way comes to join them. He walks in the garden, and they hear His voice, and at least until they have committed the first sin, they are not afraid.

Of course, after the Fall, much of this familiarity of God with man passes away: not that His wish to be with us grew less, but that we were less able to bear it. Yet, when He forms a people for Himself from the descendants of Jacob and brings them out of Egypt with Moses, He is there in the midst of them. How so? He tells them to make a tabernacle. The tabernacle was a beautiful tent that served as a portable temple. We read that when it was made, “The cloud covered the tabernacle, and the glory of the Lord filled it.”

But all that was just a preparation for what our Lord Jesus Christ, Wisdom incarnate, did on the last night of His earthly life. He took bread and broke it and took wine and blessed it, and made them into His Body and Blood. He thus instituted the Blessed Sacrament. Ever since then, this has been the new and more perfect way in which God dwells with His people.

For how long does the presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament last? Is it just during the time of Mass, or perhaps just during the time of Holy Communion? No. After all, if the Jewish tabernacle was filled with a cloud of glory throughout their journey in the desert, how much more will God bless our churches with His presence? One of His names is Emmanuel, which means “God with us”. He has promised, “I am with you all days, even to the end of time”. Wherever the Blessed Sacrament is reserved, God is with His people. And instead of just one tabernacle, as God’s people had of old, we now have many thousands.

But what is Christ’s life in the Blessed Sacrament? What does He do there? For He is certainly not inert, nor is He sleeping, as once He slept on the sea of Galilee. In his Apocalypse, St John has a vision of “a Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes”, being worshipped by many “angels” and “living creatures”. This is a symbol of our Lord’s life in the tabernacle. He is worshipped by many angels, who are always present in our churches, and I hope He is being worshipped by us, the living creatures.  What about the seven horns and eyes? “Horn” in Scripture is an image of power, and seven is the number of perfection. So, the seven horns of the Lamb mean that He has all power; the seven eyes means His perfect knowledge of all that happens. Not only from heaven, but from His place in the Blessed Sacrament, Christ is ruling over the nations of the world.

How does He do this? I know a person who was brought up without any religion, unbaptised herself, born from unbaptised parents, and living in a Communist country. One day, she was walking through the streets of her capital city when on a sudden impulse she entered a church, though she knew nothing about it and no one there. Not long afterwards, she was baptised as a Catholic, and now she is a Dominican tertiary. What had happened? From the tabernacle Christ spoke to her heart, and drew her into His Church. And from each of His tabernacles, our Lord is constantly sending actual graces to those who come to pray but also to those in the streets outside and in the houses roundabout. His “delights are to be with the children of men.”

Finally, what is all this tending to? If our Lord remains in the Blessed Sacrament, it is to accustom men to dwell with God. This is what St John sees at the end of the Apocalypse: the “new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven, and a great voice from the throne says: Behold, the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people: and God himself with them shall be their God.”