This coming Sunday is the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. All the gospel writers describe the miracle of the fishes and loaves (Mk 6:33-46, Mt 14:13-23, Lk 9:10-17, and Jn 6:1-15). Through the dialogue that precedes and follows the miracle, Jesus teaches the disciples to trust in him whenever they meet with difficulties in their future apostolic endeavors. He teaches them that they should engage in using whatever resources they have even if they are clearly inadequate. He will supply what is lacking and underscores the meaning of the their continuing mission:
they are to nourish the people,
they will need God’s help in nourishing the people, and
their job is to distribute that which Christ provides.
In the account of the miracles, although Jesus orders the Apostles to feed the people, the main act is performed by Jesus alone. In a solemn, liturgical style, St John describes the scene as “Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated…” (Jn 6:11). Where the other gospels go on to describe more events, the fourth gospel pauses to theological reflect on the meaning of the miracle whose inner meaning is spelled out at length in Jn 6:25-59. These verses are known as the Bread of Life Discourse.
The best way to understand this discourse is to recognize that it centers on one biblical text, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat” (v. 31), and is therefore a conscious demonstration of the truth of 5:39, 46–47 that the Scriptures illuminate the person of Jesus. The pivotal text is an echo of many Old Testament verses:
Exod 16:4: “I will now rain down bread from heaven for you”;
Neh 9:15: “Food from heaven you gave them in their hunger”;
Ps 78:24: “He rained manna upon them for food and gave them heavenly bread”;
Ps 105:40: “ … and with bread from heaven he satisfied them.”
All of these verses are referring to the miracle of manna in the desert during the Exodus from Egypt. The first reading on Corpus Christi Sunday is taken from Dt 8 in which Moses reminds the people of what God had done for them: “…fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.” (Dt 8:3)
This is a sign/miracle which discloses Jesus as the one who sustains us with his living word and with the gift of his own life in the Eucharistic bread. Not only the sign of the bread but also the reassuring words to the disciples, ‘It is I’ (John 6:20), along with the Christological ‘I am’ statements (vv. 25, 35, 41, 48-51), all draw our attention beyond the words of Jesus and beyond the Eucharist itself to the person of Jesus who communicated his life-giving power through them. For St. John, the point of this scene is that Jesus is the Moses-like prophet who feeds his people with a new bread. This new bread is Jesus’ word of revelation received in faith as well as his Eucharistic bread. But the crowd’s understanding is clouded by their messianic expectations because their hopes are tainted with politics and power. They do not see the spiritual nature of the messianic kingdom; only the outward signs.
The discourse is interrupted four times by dialogue from/within the audience. Lifted from the text and placed in order of occurrence it is easy to see the shifting reaction of the audience as their messianic expectations are not being met.
So they said to him, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” (John 6:30-31)
So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” (John 6:34)
The Jews murmured about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” and they said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” (John 6:41-42)
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?” (John 6:52)
In Jn 6:4 we are told that the Passover was at hand. After that St John has little to directly say about the Passover and its relation to the Bread of Life Discourse. Many Catholic scholars believe that St John’s writing assumes that the reader is familiar with the synoptic Gospels. Consequently, St John does not recount the story of Jesus, rather, St John gives the theological perspective. Whereas the synoptic writers recount the Eucharistic institution in their Gospels, St John provides the theological basis for the event. Where the synoptic writers place their accounts in the proper historical setting, the Passover feast; St John provides the explanations in a different setting, following the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. In this way he shows the prefiguring of Holy Eucharist in the OT via the Exodus account, as well as an immediate prefiguring here at another Passover.
But St John did not simply use the Passover setting as a backdrop. There is some evidence that in St John’s telling of the story he has captured very strong parallels to the Passover feast, just as in the Last Supper. In the Passover liturgy four children ask questions about what is enacted by the celebration. These questions have parallels in questions that the crowd asks of Jesus. The first question of the meal is about the works of God. The second question regards passages in Scripture. The mocking question in vv.41-42 is equated with the third question posed at the meal by the ‘wicked child’. The ‘sincere child’ asks the fourth question supposed to be a practical question paralleled in v.52.
In today’s first reading we are given a goal: “that you may come to share in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Wow! This is one of the most profound statements in the entire New Testament. It has played a central role in Christian theology, especially in the Eastern Christian tradition, where it is often called theosis or divinization. But the first thing to note is what Peter does not mean. He does not mean that human beings become gods by nature, cease to be creatures, or somehow merge into God’s essence. The distinction between Creator and creature remains. Yet Peter is saying something astonishingly positive: through Christ, human beings are invited into a real participation in God’s own life.
The fuller verse reads: “He has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire.” Notice the contrast: corruption versus divine life, sin versus holiness, and death versus immortality. Peter is describing the restoration of humanity to the destiny God intended from the beginning. Human beings were created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27). Through Christ, that image is renewed and brought to fulfillment.
A helpful parallel is found in John’s Gospel: “To those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12). And in Paul’s letters: “All of us… are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18). The New Testament consistently teaches that salvation is not merely forgiveness of sins; it is participation in God’s own life.
The early Christian writers were remarkably bold in describing this mystery. Irenaeus of Lyons emphasized that Christ became what we are so that we might become what God intended us to be. He wrote: “The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ … became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is.” For Irenaeus, salvation is the restoration and completion of humanity.
Perhaps the most famous statement comes from Athanasius: “God became man so that man might become god.” This phrase can sound startling today, but Athanasius was not teaching that humans become divine beings independent of God. He meant that through union with Christ we share by grace what belongs to God by nature: immortality, holiness, righteousness, and communion with the Father.
Gregory of Nazianzus taught: “Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us.” The Christian life is a process of transformation into Christ’s likeness. Augustine of Hippo also embraced this theme: “God became man, that man might become God.” For Augustine, participation in God means being drawn into the life of the Trinity through grace, not becoming divine in essence.
For Peter, sharing in the divine nature is not an abstract mystical concept. Immediately after this verse he lists virtues that should grow in the believer: faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, mutual affection and love. The evidence of participation in God’s life is that a person increasingly reflects God’s character. One might say since God is love, holy, merciful, and faithful, then we are called to become those same things. The goal is not becoming less human but becoming fully human as God intended.
The Church Fathers provide a useful image: a piece of iron placed into a blazing fire. The iron remains iron. It does not become fire by nature. Yet it becomes glowing, radiant, and hot because it participates in the fire. So too, the Christian remains fully human. Yet through Christ, the sacraments, prayer, and the Holy Spirit, the believer becomes filled with the very life of God.
That is the astonishing promise Peter holds before his readers: salvation is not merely being rescued from something; it is being drawn into communion with God Himself, sharing by grace in what God is by nature. That is what Peter means by “share[ing] in the divine nature.”
Image credit: Created by ChapGPT, May 31 2026 | “Iron being heated and glowing in fire”
Opposed amphibious landings are difficult to say the least. Later this week we will remember the Normandy landings of June 6, 1944 which were, and remains, the largest amphibious invasion in history. The Allied Forces under the central command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed nearly 7,000 naval vessels, over 11,000 aircraft, and enormous logistical support systems. The naval force included battleships, cruisers, destroyers, troop transports, and specialized landing craft. Over the course of the day more than 165,000 troops landed at five different beaches. Resistance ranged from intense at Omaha Beach to minimal at Utah Beach. This was made possible by complete domination of the sea and air – and a massive prepared logistic system in support from D-Day onward.
An opposed amphibious landing by China against Taiwan will be on the same order of magnitude. – and the Chinese have been practicing in plain sight for more than a decade.
This post describes the World War II logistic efforts to give the reader a sense of scope and complexity. The post goes on to describe China’s preparation for a potential amphibious landing. There are parallels to Normandy and there are massive differences.
D-Day at Normandy.
The landings were successful and then the logistic war needed to be won. The 165,000 soldiers needed to be resupplied with food, ammunition, and replacement soldiers. Heavy equipment such as artillery, tanks, trucks, etc. needed to be brought ashore. The inventory of what was needed to supply this massive invasion force is epic – and there were no ports, piers, heavy lift cranes/capacity and all the equipment that make up modern harbors. The Allies needed BYOH – bring your own harbors. And that is exactly what they did: the Mulberry Harbors.
Mulberry harbours were two massive, prefabricated portable harbours designed by the British in World War II to supply Allied forces on the open beaches of Normandy immediately following the D-Day landings. Components were built in the UK in great secrecy and towed across the English Channel, featuring breakwaters made of concrete caissons and sunken ships to combat storms and the harsh seas of the English Channel. Within the breakwaters the Mulberrys featured floating roadways supported by pontoons connected to massive floating pierheads that adjusted to the tidal changes.
Normandy Mulberry Harbor and a Roadway
The vastness of the operation and the absolute necessity to move men, supplies, munitions and equipment to the right place at the right time are way beyond the logistics faced by the largest supermarket chains. It has been calculated that each soldier needed 6.5lb per day to sustain him in the field. On this basis the initial landing force needed 1,072,500 lbs per day – and that was just the initial landing force. As the size of the invading force grew, so did the daily demand for supplies. In addition, there were trucks, tanks, artillery pieces, ammunition, military field hospitals, mobile radar and communications units etc, etc. all of which had to be transported across the English Channel. More than 4,000 ships operated daily to provide the supplies.
Mulberry A at Omaha was destroyed by a massive English Channel storm 2 weeks after the landings. Mulberry B was used until the ports of Cherbourg and Antwerp became available.
Anyone wondering what an invasion of Taiwan might look like now has a fresh visual clue. Defence analysts watching Chinese shipyards have noticed an increase in a particular type of vessel. China has rapidly developed specialized large-scale landing platforms, known as Shuiqiao-class barges (Type 071or Landing Platform Utility – LPU), designed for an invasion of Taiwan. Sighted in early 2025, these vessels can connect in strings of three, totaling over 820 meters (2,690 ft) in length to create massive temporary, floating piers for landing tanks and heavy military equipment directly on beaches. In the picture below, the orange capped vertical appendages are jack-up legs that extend down to anchor on the bottom specifically for stability against tides and currents as it lifts up the craft at the same time. These self-propelled landing platform utility (LPU) barges have telescoping Bailey bridges that produce a relocatable pier. There is no obvious commercial use case for these vessels. They are rather dedicated platforms for landing on beaches to deliver high volumes of wheeled and tracked military vehicles, together with associated personnel and material.
China has modified large commercial civilian roll-on/roll-off ferries to transport troops and armored vehicles to the beaches. The Shuiqiao barges will likely serve as landing platforms for these vehicles.
This article draws on the leading extant analysis, published by J. Michael Dahm and Thomas Shugart through the Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI)
Shuiqiao LPU, like the PLA-controlled ferries that would feed military vehicles through them, are not designed to be used during the initial assault phase against an opposing force, but rather as logistics support for second reinforcements. Like the Mulberrys, because of their vulnerability, they would be best employed only after a beachhead lodgment has been secured, in locations where the PLA Army and/or Marines already had solid, if not complete, control. To land the Shuiqiaos at an acceptable risk of loss, China’s military forces would first have to suppress Taiwanese defenders’ indirect and direct fire systems.
Expanded Amphibious Warfare Exercises
In August 2025, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troop and naval units conducted a large-scale exercise to simulate an invasion of Taiwan. This “capstone” amphibious exercise suggests that PL training and preparations for a future Taiwan campaign are becoming more focused, realistic, and sophisticated. The following information is taken a U.S. Naval War College China Maritime Report #52: Everything Everywhere All At Once: The Growing Complexity of PLA Amphibious Exercises.
“There has been much public discussion in recent years surrounding the PLA’s amphibious transport “gap” and China’s supposed inability to sustain a large-scale amphibious invasion of Taiwan. This discourse seems to have ignored the Chinese Communist Party’s decades-long strategy to obscure, obfuscate, and otherwise minimize its military intent and operational capabilities, hiding them from both the Chinese public and the international community. Satellite imagery reveals that in August 2025, the PLA executed a large-scale “capstone” amphibious exercise along China’s southeastern coastline, rehearsing an invasion of Taiwan. This exercise suggests that PLA training and preparations for a future Taiwan campaign are becoming more focused and sophisticated.”
Main Findings
The exercise consolidated elements from previous years into a single simulated operation. It integrated a floating causeway system, anti-landing barriers and obstacles, and amphibious Landing Craft Tank (LCT) vessels that landed forces directly onto beachheads.
For the first time observed, the PLA conducted a phased exercise with simultaneous amphibious landings in three distinct locations. Exercise areas incorporated civilian aquaculture obstacles like those expected to be found along Taiwan’s coastline, increasing environmental and tactical realism.
The exercise occurred at simulated “landing locations” opposite Taiwan, particularly within the Zhangzhou-Xiamen-Quanzhou littoral zone. The locations were distributed at distance intervals comparable to likely wartime beachheads along Taiwan’s western coastline. The total distance between discrete exercise locations was approximately 360 kilometers, roughly the distance between Taipei and Kaohsiung.
Not merely hypothetical in nature, the exercise reflected a specific geographical and operational focus. It appears to be part of a larger trend whereby the PLA is mapping its exercises onto analogous geography that reflects envisioned targets.
Future research should explore the potential applications and implications of PLA efforts to train with similar distances and geometries as would be found in prospective conflict zones.
Starting this summer, observers should scrutinize future capstone amphibious exercises to better understand the PLA’s strengths, weaknesses, and underlying operational assumptions.
Overall, the 2025 capstone exercise demonstrated meaningful progress toward the PLA’s ability to coordinate large-scale, dispersed amphibious operations using civil-military assets. The PLA probably leverages commercial, dual-use vessels to minimize its military logistics “signature” and can be expected to muster invasion forces in multifarious civilian ports. By intentionally blurring the line between civilian and military activity, the PLA raises uncertainty and increases the cost and effort of U.S. and Taiwanese monitoring, requiring additional sensors and analysts to interpret activity. The deployment of dual-use vessels obfuscates the PLA’s intentions, reduces indications and warning, and minimizes the amount of “executive decision time” available to non-PRC military and civilian officials prior to conflict, thus maximizing the probability of surprise.
The exercises also reinforce a broader trend: China is steadily moving from a coastal-defense navy toward a force capable of large-scale joint expeditionary and amphibious operations supported by immense commercial sealift capacity and rapidly expanding naval shipbuilding.
Operationally, the exercise makes sense within current PLA doctrine. Chinese planners increasingly appear interested in:
distributed amphibious entry points,
seizure of ports and airfields,
vertical helicopter envelopment,
and rapid inland penetration rather than a purely linear Normandy-style beach assault.
Multiple simultaneous landing zones could:
dilute Taiwanese defensive concentration,
create confusion about the main effort, and
accelerate operational collapse if successful.
The four-location concept is particularly notable because it suggests the PLA is practicing operational dispersion and synchronization at scale. Such operations would require:
advanced command-and-control,
very large amphibious logistics capacity,
secure communications,
coordinated naval and air cover,
and the ability to sustain forces ashore rapidly after initial landings.
It also highlights the importance of China’s growing fleet of Type 071 amphibious transport docks, Type 075 amphibious assault ship vessels, civilian roll-on/roll-off ferries, and large commercial sealift assets developed under China’s military-civil fusion strategy.
A closing thought
“Amphibious operations are among the most complex in modern warfare. They require effective command and control to synchronize an almost endless number of subcomponents into an effective whole. By increasing its flexibility and proficiency across relevant skill sets over time, the PLA is increasing the likelihood that it views (or will soon come to view) its ability to conduct a successful amphibious invasion of Taiwan as a viable option. The 2025 capstone exercise was conducted along the Zhangzhou-Xiamen-Quanzhou corridor, which closely matched the scale, spacing, and distances of plausible Taiwan invasion beachheads. Approximately 360 kilometers separated operational nodes in the exercise—comparable to the full north-south span of Taiwan’s western coastline. This scenario-specific rehearsal suggests the PLA is aligning its exercise designs with envisioned operational objectives, using geography and scale to refine campaign execution and facilitate its potential real-world application.” (CSMI Report #52)
This coming Sunday is the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. It is a celebration perhaps better known by the Latin Corpus Christi. At its core, the solemnity is a celebration of the Tradition and belief in the Eucharist as the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Many folks wonder why this celebration is not part of Holy Thursday. In the past it was and was mixed in with other themes, e.g., institution of the priesthood. And, all this occurs in the shadow of Good Friday. The placement of the celebration was not one that necessarily lends itself to a joyful celebration.
Saint Juliana of Liège, O.Praem, was the one who became the spark leading to a joyous celebration of Corpus Christi. For her devotion, life, and efforts, she is known as the “Apostle of the Blessed Sacrament.” Liège was already a center for devotion to the Eucharist, so from her early youth, Juliana had great veneration for the Eucharist and longed for a special feast day in its honor. In 1208 at age 16, she began having visions of the moon in its full splendor, crossed diametrically by a dark stripe. In time, she came to understand that the moon symbolized the life of the Church on earth, the opaque line, on the other hand, represented the absence of a liturgical feast in honor of Christ’s Body and Blood. Not having any way to bring about such a feast, she kept her thoughts to herself, except for sharing them with Blessed Eve of Liège, who lived in a cell adjacent to the Basilica of St. Martin, and a few other trusted sisters in her monastery. The vision was repeated for the next 20 years, but she maintained it as a secret. When she eventually relayed it to her confessor, he relayed it to the Bishop of Liège, Robert de Thorete as well as petitioning the learned Dominican Hugh of St-Cher. At that time bishops could order feasts in their dioceses, so Bishop Robert ordered in 1246 a celebration of Corpus Christi to be held in the diocese each year thereafter on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. In 1252, now Cardinal-Legate established the feast for his whole jurisdiction (Germany, Dacia, Bohemia, and Moravia), to be celebrated on the Thursday after the Octave of Trinity
The archdeacon of the Diocese of Liège, Jacques Pantaléon of Troyes was also won over to the cause of the Feast of Corpus Christi during his time in the Diocese of Liège. He eventually became Pope Urban IV in 1264. In addition to his devotion to St Juliana’s vision, the feast of Corpus Christi was also proposed by St. Thomas Aquinas in order to create a feast focused solely on the Holy Eucharist, emphasizing the joy of the Eucharist being the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. On August 11, 1264 the pope instituted the Solemnity of Corpus Christi on the Thursday after Pentecost as a feast for the entire Latin Rite, by the papal bull Transiturus de hoc mundo. It was the first papally-mandated feast for the world-wide church.
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