In his Sunday Reflection, Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki called the Feast of Corpus Christi the church’s most cherished doctrine.

The doctrine of the real presence of Jesus Christ is deeply connected to Catholicism, the archbishop told the Archdiocese of Milwaukee on YouTube.

“‘He who eats of my flesh and drinks of my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day.’ Communion is experienced and Jesus giving of himself to us,” Archbishop Listecki said.

He reminisced back to his early days of priesthood when he was in assigned in Riverside, Illinois.

“The parish was unique, given the fact that 250 people would fill the church,” Archbishop Listecki told the archdiocese via YouTube. ”It was small in comparison to the normal Catholic churches and because of its size everyone could hear and see with ease what was happening at the very front of the church.”

He remembers that a mother and her young daughter approached the altar and as he held up the host, the little girl opened her mouth. The mother was concerned that the child might take the sacrament at too young of an age and covered her mouth. He made it clear that he would only give the child a blessing. 

“The little girl’s eyes were fixed on me. I looked at her and gave her my best pastoral smile, knowing that in a couple of years, she would be receiving Jesus with her parents at her first Holy Communion,” Archbishop Listecki told the faithful on YouTube. 

The little girl shouted to him, calling him selfish for everyone to hear. He said that this little girl’s reaction was incredibly wise, as the body of Christ is for all. 

“Already, she understood that Jesus is meant to be shared,” he said in the YouTube video. “The real presence of Christ in the eucharist is a stumbling block for many people — that Jesus could be truly present in the consecrated blood and wine, his body and his blood, is beyond their acceptance. But it is Jesus who now offers himself to his followers in the most intimate of ways: as food for our journey through life.”