In the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Ghost, amen.

So today, as I mentioned before Mass, we are on the 45 calendar, meaning we are in the octave of Corpus Christi.

That's eight days celebrating and worshiping the most holy body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ at this establishment of his body, namely Corpus Christi.

Now, the West often speaks of Christ conquering sin at the cross, which is 100% true,

and the Eastern churches often speak of Christ conquering death at the cross, which is 100%

true. And of course, both churches, or I should say both rights, fully recognize Christ has totally defeated

sin and death at the cross. But I want to talk a little bit about Christ conquering death.

I think we often focus on Christ's conquering sin, which is a very important thing, but let's talk

about Christ conquering death specifically through the Eucharist.

So today when I was outside hearing confessions, I saw the spinal cord of some large beast out there, an ox or an animal, and I was just seeing these bones around.

And I started just thinking how life and death is all around us, especially when we're not

shielded from it.

And so when Jesus said in today's gospel, John 6, and if you look in all of John 6, even

more than just what we heard in the gospel today, repeatedly, Christ says something very, very

shocking that whoever eats his body and drinks his blood will not die. Think of like how radical that is.

Now how do we see this through the eyes of the Catholic Magisterium? It's this, that if you die

in sanctifying grace, you don't actually die. Do you realize how radical that is? Your soul lives

forever. So even if your body dies and all of our bodies will die,

because you receive Holy Communion in a state of grace, because you receive the body, blood,

soul, and divinity of Jesus, you actually never die. And that's actually not an exaggeration.

This is why St. Paul, when he talks about the Christians that have gone before him, he won't even use the term

die. He says they've fallen asleep in the Lord. He won't even use it. Many of the Eastern

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