Corpus Christi Sunday
7 June 2026
The way back to the tree
A few years ago, I read about a fascinating project in Norway called the Global Seed Vault. It's built deep inside a mountain on a remote Arctic island. The idea is simple. Inside that vault are hundreds of thousands of seed samples from around the world. Seeds for wheat. Seeds for corn. Seeds for rice. Seeds for fruits and vegetables. The purpose is to preserve life. If some catastrophe ever wiped out crops somewhere in the world, humanity would still possess the seeds necessary to begin again.
When I first heard about it, I remember thinking how strange that is. Human beings instinctively understand that if you lose the seed, eventually you lose the tree. If you lose the source of life, eventually you lose the life itself. And that observation touches something much deeper than agriculture. Because the story of salvation begins with a tree. And, in many ways, it ends with one too.
The Feast of Corpus Christi is often a day when we focus on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And rightly so. The Eucharist truly is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. But I'd like us to ask a different question. Why? Why would God choose to give Himself to us as food? Why bread? Why eating? Why Communion?
The answer begins not in John 6. It begins in Genesis. In the beginning, God creates humanity and places Adam and Eve in a garden. The center of that garden contains two remarkable trees. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And the Tree of Life. One tree represented trust. The other represented the choice of autonomy. One tree represented receiving life from God. The other represented the choice of taking life on our own terms.
We know the story. The serpent convinces Adam and Eve that God cannot be trusted. They reach out their hands. They take. They eat. And immediately everything changes. Sin enters the world. Death enters the world. Humanity is expelled from Eden. But notice something often overlooked. After the Fall, God specifically bars humanity from the Tree of Life. Why? Because eternal life and sin cannot coexist. Humanity loses access to the source of divine life. And from that moment onward, the entire story of Scripture becomes the story of how God intends to restore what was lost.
That is the story behind today's feast. The whole Old Testament points toward it. In our first reading, Moses reminds Israel about the manna in the wilderness. The people had escaped Egypt but found themselves in a desert. No crops. No fields. No means of survival. And every morning God provided bread from heaven. Manna. The people gathered it daily. If you don’t like leftovers, you most likely would have struggled eating the same thing everyday like they did. However, they lived because God fed them.
But Moses tells them something important. The manna wasn't merely food. It was a lesson. God was teaching His people dependence. "He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna." In other words, God wanted Israel to understand something they would otherwise forget: Life is received. Life is gift. Life comes from God.
Yet the manna itself was never the destination. Everyone who ate it eventually died. The manna pointed toward something greater. And centuries later, Jesus stands before the crowds in John chapter 6 and makes one of the most astonishing claims in all of Scripture. "I am the living bread that came down from heaven."
Notice what He does not say. He does not say, "I will give bread." He says, "I am the bread." The gift is not something Jesus gives. The gift is Jesus Himself. The crowd immediately understands the shocking implication. That's why they begin arguing. How can this man give us His flesh to eat? And Jesus does something surprising. He doesn't soften His language. He doesn't explain it away. He doesn't say, "You misunderstood me." Instead, He doubles down. "My flesh is true food. My blood is true drink." The reaction only makes sense if they understood Him literally. And they did.
Jesus is revealing that He is the fulfillment of everything that came before. The manna. The sacrifices. The Passover. All of it. But there is something even deeper happening. The Fathers of the Church loved to connect the Eucharist to the Tree of Life.
Think about the parallel. In Eden, humanity stretched out its hand and ate. And death entered the world. Now Christ stretches out His hands upon the Cross. And through the Eucharist offers us something to eat. And life enters the world again. The Cross becomes the new Tree of Life. And the Eucharist becomes its fruit.
That image appears over and over again in the early Church. For the Fathers, the Eucharist wasn't merely nourishment. It was God's answer to Eden. Humanity lost access to the Tree. Christ restores access to divine life.
Many Catholics understandably approach Communion as something they should do. Something important. Something holy. Something expected. But Jesus speaks about it differently. He speaks about it as life itself. "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life." Notice the tense. Not "will have." Has. Already.
Eternal life begins now. The Eucharist is not simply preparation for heaven. It is participation in heaven. Not fully. Not perfectly. But really. Every time we receive Communion worthily, we receive the very life of the risen Christ. The same life that conquered death. The same life that raised Him from the tomb. The same life that will one day raise us.
That's why Corpus Christi is ultimately a feast of hope. Because the world often feels like a place far removed from Eden. We know what loss feels like. We know sickness. We know grief. We know disappointment. We know the reality of death. Every cemetery reminds us that something has gone terribly wrong with the world. But every altar reminds us that God has not abandoned His plan or His people. The way back to the Tree has been opened. The exile is ending. The life that was lost is being restored.
It means death no longer has the final word. Because Christ has planted a new Tree in the midst of the world. And its fruit is given to us every Sunday.
Perhaps that is why the Eucharist should never become ordinary for us. Familiar, yes. Comforting, yes. But never ordinary. Because every time we approach this altar, we are approaching the fulfillment of the entire story of salvation. Adam reached out his hand and brought death. Christ stretches out His hands and gives life. And every time we come forward for Holy Communion, we are being invited to receive again what humanity lost long ago. The life of God Himself. The way back to the Tree. The way back home.
Prayer that we never tire of this food.