Four solemnities frame the month: the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (3), the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (8), the Nativity of John the Baptist (24), and Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles (29). Add in the Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (9) and that represents a lot of love poured out for this church.

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ has a long history—as a devotion when few actually received Communion and as the subject of festive processions. Today we look to it as a celebration of the centrality of the Eucharist in our lives as Christians and Catholics.

No sound is so sweet to our ears as those three powerful words: “I love you.” But as extraordinary and meaningful as those words are, if words are all we get, they can become pretty thin. Every human exchange has to have more than words behind it.

On the first of the Days of Unleavened Bread, the day they prepare the Passover sacrifice, his disciples asked him, “Where do you want us to go and make preparations so you can eat the Passover meal?”

The pastor of the small farming village in Bari, Italy where my father was born was very gracious to me when I visited him. In the little church was a plaque thanking my dad and uncles for sending the money from America to build the simple structure.

As a lover of words I was fascinated to learn that the root of the word liturgy comes from Latin for “work of the people.” What an amazing insight that brings to the central ritual of Christianity. Breaking bread with fellow Christians, remembering Christ, and sharing in his Body and Blood are actions that early Christians actually considered their work.

I was in my friend Billy’s kitchen waiting for him to come downstairs so we could go out and play. Billy was the oldest of nine kids. Dinner was over, and his mother stood at the kitchen counter and dealt out the bread for eight sandwiches—12 pieces of bread, side by side, for the six kids who were in school, and four more pieces next to them to make the two sandwiches her husband would take to work with him.

A local blood bank has the name LifeSource. Blood indeed is what keeps us alive as it courses through our veins bringing in oxygen and taking out carbon dioxide. A simple transfusion of a pint of blood can mean the difference between life and death. Infections carried in the bloodstream can be deadly.

To receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we must first seek his forgiveness.

The holy and sacred sacrifice and sacrament of the Eucharist, the heart of the Christian religion . . . is an ineffable mystery that embraces the untold depths of divine love . . . . Prayer united to this divine sacrifice has unutterable power.