Allan BatuhanPublished on: Jun 07, 2026, 9:47 am
“No one lives for oneself alone. No one dies for oneself alone.” For generations of Filipino Catholics, these words from Fr. Honti’s beloved hymn have echoed through churches, retreats, wakes, and Sunday Masses. Long before we could explain their theology, we somehow recognized their truth: human life is never solitary. We belong to one another.
The Feast of Corpus Christi invites us into that same mystery. Many Catholics first encounter the Body of Christ in the Eucharist. We learn that Christ is truly present in the consecrated Host, and we respond with reverence. Yet as faith matures, the meaning of the Body of Christ begins to widen. We encounter the words of St. Paul: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body.” The Eucharist is no longer only something we receive. It becomes something that gathers us. Around a common table, strangers become brothers and sisters. The Body of Christ is no longer only the Host upon the altar. It is also the gathered Church, the Mystical Body.
Thomas Merton once described an experience while walking through the streets of Louisville. Surrounded by strangers, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the realization that they belonged to him and he to them. Looking at the crowds around him, he saw what he called the secret beauty of their hearts, the person each one was in the eyes of God. Reflecting on that moment, he wrote: “We could not be alien to one another.” Perhaps this is one of the deepest gifts of the Eucharist. It trains Christians not merely to worship Christ, but to recognize Him: first in the Host, then in the gathered Church, and eventually in the ordinary human person. The Christ we adore at the altar teaches us to see Him beyond the altar.
The hymn Pananagutan preserves this wisdom. Its call to responsibility begins with a deeper truth: belonging. No one lives for oneself alone. No one dies for oneself alone. We care for one another because we belong to one another. Can we recognize Christ in those whom society finds easiest to dismiss? The addict whose failures are visible to everyone. The prisoner whose crime has become his defining identity. The migrant. The LGBTQ person reduced to a label. The poor family living beneath a bridge. The political opponent. The names change from generation to generation, but the temptation remains the same. We cease encountering persons and begin encountering categories. We stop seeing faces and start seeing labels. We become accustomed to some suffering.
Perhaps the most difficult question Corpus Christi poses is not whether we believe Christ is present in the Eucharist. Most Catholics would say yes. The more unsettling question is whether that recognition continues beyond the altar. Can we receive the Body of Christ on Sunday and remain indifferent to members of that same Body on Monday? Corpus Christi does not abolish accountability or deny the reality of human failure. It asks something more fundamental. Can we still see them as belonging to us? The question is not whether every person is innocent. The question is whether any person can become invisible.
Every age is tempted by the promise that security, order, prosperity, or even justice can be achieved by treating certain persons as expendable. Corpus Christi refuses that logic. For if we who are many are one body, then no member of the Body can ever be merely disposable. Perhaps this is why the Church carries the Eucharist into the streets during Corpus Christi processions. The procession leaves the sanctuary because communion is meant to leave the sanctuary as well. The Body of Christ enters the places where human life unfolds. The Eucharist is not completed at the altar. It begins there.
The procession continues wherever Christians carry into the world what they have received: the habit of recognition, the refusal to reduce persons to categories, and the willingness to see a neighbor before seeing a label. The Christ we adore in the Eucharist remains present among us still, waiting to be recognized in ordinary human faces. And perhaps that is where the procession has always been leading.
