In his great divine-human imagination Jesus gave us this great gift as a way to be with us always. As the Second Reading says, he was the High Priest of all the blessings to come. In his death on our behalf he became the new covenant, one that would create a new relationship, binding us to God and to one another with deep bonds of communion. That is what we celebrate at every Mass.

There are two sides to this gift. On the one hand, it is Jesus’ gift to us. A great gift of love. Notice how in the Gospel Jesus prepares every detail, even down to making arrangements for the room for the Last Supper. We don’t create the Eucharist. It is given to us as a gift.

But then, there’s the other side. We have to respond to the gift. Notice in the First Reading that when Moses was celebrating the First Covenant, the people promised they would do everything the Lord asked of them. “We will observe all that the Lord has decreed; we will obey.” Likewise, Jesus gave us the New Commandment in the context of the Lord’s Supper. Yes, the Eucharist is a gift of love but we are to respond to this gift by living the New Commandment of love.

In one of his daily tweets, two days ago, Pope Francis wrote: “The Eucharist impels us to a strong and committed love of neighbour. We cannot truly understand or live the meaning of the Eucharist if our hearts are closed to our brothers and sisters, especially toward those who are poor, suffering, or who may have gone astray in life.”

Coming to Mass is to let ourselves be renewed by Jesus himself, the New Covenant. And then we go out to be the Eucharist for our world, satisfying the various hungers we find around us in those who are experiencing hardship, loneliness, fear, anxiety…

Last week, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis is to canonize Carlo Acutis the young Italian saint. He is being called the first millennial saint. He died in 2006 so there are many images of him in modern clothes, jeans and sneakers. He had an enormous love of the Mass. Indeed, he managed to drag his relatives, his parents to Mass every day. Usually it would be the other way around. But in this case, it was not his parents bringing the little boy to Mass, but it was he who managed to get himself to Mass and to convince others to receive Communion daily. He was big into computers and set up a website exhibition on Eucharistic miracles.

But this great love for the Eucharist was matched by living out the Eucharist. He used to ask himself before every action: “Will this please Jesus. Can I do this for Jesus?”  He lived out the Eucharist in his daily life. He stood up for children at school who got bullied, especially those with disabilities. When a friend’s parents were getting a divorce, Carlo made a special effort to include his friend in the Acutis’ family life. Carlo loved playing video games such as Nintendo Game Boy and GameCube as well as PlayStation and Xbox. He also liked Spider-Man and Pokémon. But he also decided to limit his video game playing to no more than two hours per week.

On this celebration of Corpus Christi, let’s decide in our hearts to be grateful for the gift of Jesus himself coming to us but also that we will do all that he tells us in his Word, the Gospel, by living the New Commandment of love. He gives us his body but we can now offer him our hands and feet to continue his presence in the world.