It is not lost on me that the Sunday celebration of Corpus Christi and Juneteenth fall on the same day this year.
For us as Catholics, we believe that the Eucharist is the true body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. He made it very apparent what He meant when He told His followers they would have to eat Him (He used the word to gnaw like and animal eats) and did not correct Himself or say it’s symbolic as He did in many other teachings. And then He presented us with the first mass at the Last Supper.
We also have much foreshadowing of the Eucharist in such scriptures about: the unleavened bread the Hebrews took in flight, the manna in the desert, the bread and wine the priest Melchizedek brought out in thanksgiving, the Passover lamb, and many others. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us [his] flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” - John 6:51-58
The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and his holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation." - Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1376
Jesus has performed many Eucharistic miracles throughout history where the bread has turned to flesh and the wine into real blood (and the flesh and blood top are consistent): https://www.churchpop.com/2015/06/28/5-extraordinary-eucharistic-miracles-with-pictures/
Every Sunday, and in fact every mass, we celebrate the liturgy of the Eucharist where through the power of the Holy Spirit the bread and wine are changed into Jesus' true body and blood. The substances change (what bread and wine are) and the accidents stay the same (color, texture, taste, etc.). It's through this sacrament we are able to take Jesus into ourselves and receive the graces we need to live the life He's called us to. We receive forgiveness and freedom from sins, and the help on our journey to our divination and eternal life.
And on the very same day we celebrate and remember ALL the slaves becoming free in the U.S. On January 1, 1836 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring "that all persons held as slaves… shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." That's fine and dandy, but not everyone was notified of this great achievement.
"Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation - which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger's regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance." - https://www.juneteenth.com/history/
So for me, on this day I remember and give thanks for Jesus in the Eucharist and for the complete of the freedom given to the slaves. Jesus wants us ALL to not only be free here on Earth, but to be free from our sin and attachments to them and the things of this world to be able to live the life of love he has called us to, and to have everlasting life.