When it comes to the greatest mysteries of our faith, it’s important to keep things simple. Because the best explanation has already been given to us by the greatest teacher there has ever been. All we need to do is to turn to the Gospels and see what Christ himself had to say.

When it comes to the mystery of the Eucharist, the gift Christ gives us of his own body and blood shrouded under the appearance of bread and wine, what does he have to say? “This is my body. This is my blood.” It’s no more complicated than that. He doesn’t say “This represents my body” or “This is a symbol of my blood”. But simply, “This is my body. This is my blood.”

In the Eucharist, we don’t have a part of Christ. He didn’t say: “This is a piece of my body. These are some drops of my blood.” But: “This is my body. This is my blood.” Whole and entire. If you were to receive only half a host, you wouldn’t receive half of Christ’s body, but all of it. You don’t receive more of him if you receive a bigger host. The smallest crumbs of the host are Christ’s body, whole and entire — which is why we must be so careful when we receive Holy Communion to make sure that not one of them is lost.

When someone’s body and blood are separated from each other, they die. But as St Paul tells us, “Christ being raised from the dead will never die again” (Rom. 6:9). His body and blood are separate no more, and can never be separated again. Wherever one is, the other is too. What he says is true: this is his body. But it is not only his body. It is his body and his blood. So also with the chalice: This is his blood and his body.

Christ makes himself present under the appearance of two separate things — bread and wine — to remind us of that one time when his body and his blood really were separated, to make his passion and death present for us whenever the sacrifice of the Mass is offered. But it is not his dead body and blood, but the living Christ we receive in Holy Communion.

And so we are closer to him even than his disciples were when he walked on earth. It’s so easy for us to read the Gospels and wish we were there, to look with jealousy on those who got to see and speak to and touch Jesus. And yet we can do precisely this by coming to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

If you want to make Christ the centre of your life, make the Eucharist the centre of your life. This Sunday, make a special effort to join him as he is carried through the streets of our city in the Corpus Christi procession. Make Mass the focal point of your week — of even of every day if you can — and look forward to that moment of Communion as one of the highlights of the Mass. Show Christ that you know he is there by genuflecting when you enter the church, by spending the time before Mass in quiet prayer, by receiving him reverently and carefully. Make a prayer of thanksgiving after Communion to drive home to yourself what a great gift you have received. And then when the priest tells us we have to go, and we reluctantly leave the Church at the end of Mass, we should look forward to coming back again soon. Because if we are looking forward to seeing Christ again here, we won’t be caught off guard when he comes to meet us somewhere else, in some other form — whether we find him in someone who needs our help, or when he calls us to him in heaven, or when he comes again in all his glory to judge the living and the dead.

Though not one of the original Twelve, Barnabas was called an apostle by the early Church. His given name was Joseph, but the apostles gave him a new name, Barnabas, meaning “son of encouragement” (Acts 4:36), a name which seems to capture his mission in life, because he was someone who built others up, who opened doors, who believed in people when others doubted them.

He first appears in Acts as a generous disciple of our Lord, selling a field and laying the proceeds at the apostles’ feet. But his deeper significance emerges when he welcomes a newly converted Saul — later Paul — into the Christian community. Others were understandably suspicious of Paul, given his past as a persecutor, but Barnabas believed in the change grace had wrought. He stood beside Paul and introduced him to the apostles. In doing so, he opened the door to one of the greatest missionary vocations in history, because without Paul’s energy and enthusiasm, the Church would have found the work of evangelisation far more difficult.

Later, when the Church in Antioch began to grow, it was Barnabas who was sent from Jerusalem to guide and encourage this fledgling Gentile community. He rejoiced in what he saw and again reached out to Paul, inviting him to join in the work. Together they became the first great missionary pair of the Church.

What stands out is Barnabas’ quiet, steady presence: not dominating, not desperately seeking attention, but enabling others to shine, especially Paul. And even when Paul and Barnabas had a disagreement over whether to bring along the young John Mark, Barnabas again chose to believe in the one who had previously failed. He took Mark with him and gave him another chance. Later, Paul himself would commend Mark as “useful to me in ministry” (2 Tim. 4:11) and all perhaps because Barnabas had chosen not to give up on him.

Barnabas teaches us something vital about the Christian life: that encouragement is not a lesser gift. It is a grace that often works behind the scenes, lifting the discouraged, believing in those whom others distrust, and enabling vocations to flourish. The Church needs not only great preachers and saints, but also people like Barnabas, who see potential, who forgive, who strengthen, who believe.

His life invites us to ask: Whom might I encourage today? Is there someone whose gifts need drawing out? Is there someone who failed once but deserves another chance?

Barnabas was a bridge-builder, a man of generosity, humility, and peace. He reminds us that to be an apostle is not just to proclaim the Word, but to make space for others to proclaim it too.

St Barnabas, Son of encouragement, pray for us.

At the Ascension we heard how Jesus, before he returned to the Father, told the Apostles not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the “promise of the Father… in a few days you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5). The Apostles and other disciples, together with Our Lady, waited in the Upper Room, where the Lord had celebrated the Last Supper, where they had hidden in fear after his death, and where he had appeared to them on Easter Sunday. They waited, and waited. A day and a night passed, and then another, and then another. Only ten days later, on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, did the promised Spirit arrive, in wind and flame.

We might ask why the Lord made them wait so long. Pentecost, the Jewish harvest festival and celebration of the giving of the Law, was an appropriate day for descent of the Holy Spirit, who is the law of the New Covenant placed in the heart of believers and the power to harvest men and women for Christ’s kingdom. A long wait gave them plenty of time to learn from Our Lady about the Lord’s early life, as a lovely tradition tells us, and to be formed by her to cooperate with the Holy Spirit whom she had known since her Conception.

Perhaps the most fitting explanation for the long wait was that God wanted the early Church to grow in desire for the Holy Spirit promised by Christ, to long for the Spirit’s presence, to see and know all the reasons why they needed his guidance and help, so that they would be totally receptive and responsive, like Our Lady, to his power coming down upon them.

This experience of desiring the Spirit is a lesson the Church wants each of us to learn — not just as we wait for the yearly celebration of Pentecost, but every day of our lives. We pray “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love”. The Holy Spirit has already come into our hearts, at our baptism, at Confirmation, every time we receive Holy Communion and the other sacraments. The Holy Spirit comes with every absolution of our sins, and speaks in our hearts in every prayer and good work. And yet we keep praying, “Come!” Our need for the power of the Spirit is always the same, and yet always new, as we encounter new challenges, meet new obstacles, have new needs.

In the Veni Creator Spiritus hymn for Pentecost we beg the Holy Spirit to take up his rest in our hearts, to come with his grace and heavenly aid, to fill the hearts he has made, to give us his sevenfold gift of grace, to illumine our minds, inflame our hearts, strengthen our bodies, repel our enemies, give us peace, and help us to know God the Father and the Son. The Sequence for the Mass of Pentecost asks the Spirit to comfort us, give us rest in labour, refreshment in heat, solace in tribulation, cleansing what is impure, irrigating what is desiccated, healing what is wounded, bending whatever is stubborn, warming whatever is frozen, putting back on the narrow way whatever leads us astray, granting us the reward of virtue, the end of salvation and eternal joy. That is quite a list!

The more we realise our need for the Holy Spirit and the more we ask of him, the more he is able to do for us. And so we wait, and pray, and implore: “Come, Holy Spirit.”