(May 31, 2010) On Thursday we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi, the feast of
the Body and Blood of our Lord, which in the liturgical calendar comes on Thursday
after the Feast of the Holy Trinity. The Solemnity of Corpus Christi commemorates
the institution of the Holy Eucharist, paralleling Maundy Thursday celebration of
the institution of the Eucharist. This feast was introduced in the late 13th century
to encourage the faithful give special honour to the Holy Eucharist. The official
title of this Solemnity was changed in 1970 to the present title, The Body and Blood
of Christ. On this day we honour Jesus who is present in the Church through the Holy
Eucharist and shares his own Body and Blood with us as our food and drink. Since the
Apostolic Church, Christians have been celebrating the Eucharist as a commemoration
of the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples. Even though Christians have high
esteem for all of the sacraments, the Eucharist has traditionally held a special place
among the sacraments. Ignatius of Antioch referred to the Eucharist as the "medicine
of immortality". Thomas Aquinas considered the Eucharist to be the greatest of all
sacraments. At the same time, the Church has viewed the Eucharist as unique, while
other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate,
are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For the Church the Feast
of the Body of Christ symbolizes the Eucharist and Communion, identifying the belief
in the death of Christ and His resurrection. The Holy Eucharist also called Communion
is a communal sacrificial meal shared and offered by the community to the Father as
a sign of forgiveness, togetherness and unity. Maundy Thursday would seem to be the
best day to celebrate the Eucharist, because that is the day Jesus actually instituted
the sacrament. In fact, the Institution of the Eucharist is celebrated solemnly on
Maundy Thursday. However, the emphasis on the passion themes present in the Maundy
Thursday celebration has created the need for another day to focus entirely on the
Eucharist itself. The Thursday after Trinity Sunday was chosen for the date of the
Corpus Christi feast. In countries where it is not a day of obligation, the feast
is celebrated on a Sunday. It is a Western Catholic feast but is also celebrated in
some Anglican and Lutheran churches. At the end of the Mass, it is customary to have
a Procession of the Blessed Sacrament followed by Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The
appearance of Corpus Christi as a feast in the Christian calendar was primarily due
to the petitions of the thirteenth-century Augustinian nun Juliana of Liège. From
her early youth Juliana had veneration for the Blessed Sacrament, and always longed
for a special feast in its honour. This desire is said to have been increased by a
vision of the Church under the appearance of the full moon having one dark spot, which
signified the absence of such a solemnity. In 1208 she reported her first vision of
Christ in which she was instructed to plead for the institution of the feast of Corpus
Christi. The vision was repeated for the next 20 years but she kept it a secret. When
she eventually relayed it to her confessor, he considered it right to report it to
the bishop. At that time bishops could order feasts in their dioceses. Using this
privilege in 1246 Bishop Robert of Liège convened a synod and ordered a celebration
of Corpus Christi festival to be held each year thereafter. The celebration of Corpus
Christi became widespread only after both St. Juliana and Bishop Robert had died.
In 1263 Pope Urban IV investigated claims of a Eucharistic miracle at Bolsena, in
which a consecrated host began to bleed. In 1264 he issued the papal bull in which
Corpus Christi was made a feast throughout the entire Latin Rite focussing solely
on the Holy Eucharist and ordered the annual celebration of Corpus Christi on the
Thursday after Trinity Sunday. More than four decades later, Pope Clement V published
a new decree which embodied Urban IV's decree and ordered the adoption of the feast
at the General Council of Vienna in 1311. Pope John XXII, successor of Clement V,
urged this observance in the universal church. A new liturgy for the feast was
composed by St. Thomas Aquinas. This liturgy has come to be used not only on the Feast
of Corpus Christi itself but also throughout the liturgical year at events related
to the Blessed Sacrament. The hymn Thomas Aquinas composed for Vespers of Corpus Christi,
Pange Lingua, is also used on Holy Thursday during the procession of the Blessed Sacrament
to the altar of repose. The last two verses of Pange Lingua are also used as a separate
hymn, Tantum Ergo, which is sung at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. O Salutaris
Hostia, another hymn sung at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, comprises the last
two verses of another hymn (Verbum Supernum Prodiens) written by Aquinas for the Morning
Prayer Lauds for Corpus Christi. Aquinas also composed the prayers for the Mass of
Corpus Christi, including the sequence Lauda Sion Salvatorem. The epistle reading
for the Mass was taken from Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians on the institution
of the Eucharist and the Gospel reading was taken from the Gospel of John chapter
6. The processions on Corpus Christi to honour the Holy Eucharist were not mentioned
in the decrees, but had become a principal feature of the feast's celebration by the
faithful, and became a tradition throughout Europe. The Corpus Christi procession
represents the typical form of a Eucharistic procession. It is a prolongation of the
celebration of the Eucharist: immediately after Mass, the Sacred Host, consecrated
during the Mass, is borne out of the Church for the Christian faithful "to make public
profession of faith and worship of the Most Blessed Sacrament". In this act of public
procession we proclaim that God still loves the world so much that He still sends
His Son, through His Church. This procession is a reminder of the baptismal vocation
of every Christian to carry forward in time the redemptive mission of Jesus Christ
until He returns. At an interior level, it also symbolizes the universal call to holiness,
to continuing conversion in Christ. We who are baptized are called into a very real
communion with the Trinitarian God. He comes to dwell within us and we are to live
our lives now in Him, for the world. The faithful understand and appreciate the values
inherent in the procession: they are aware of being "the People of God", journeying
with the Lord, and proclaiming faith in him who has become truly "God-amongst-us".
The Eucharistic procession is normally concluded by a blessing with the Blessed Sacrament.
In the specific case of the Corpus Christi procession, the solemn blessing with the
Blessed Sacrament concludes the entire celebration: the usual blessing by the priest
is replaced by the blessing with the Blessed Sacrament. The feast of Corpus Christi
tells us that the Eucharist is source and summit of the Christian life. The Holy Eucharist
gives meaning to our Christian life and existence. For in the blessed Eucharist is
contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself. At the same
time the Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in
the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in
being. It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ
and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit.
Finally, by the Eucharistic Celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly
liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all. In brief, the Eucharist
is the sum and summary of our faith: "Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist,
and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking." The Feast of Corpus Christi
is an invitation to reaffirm our belief in the implications of the Incarnation of
Jesus Christ. Through Baptism, through participation in all of the sacraments and,
in particular, through the Holy Eucharist, every Christian abides in God. Therefore
all Christians share his Life, the very life of the God who is Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, a communion of Divine Persons in the Perfect unity of Perfect love. This is
why this Feast of Corpus Christi follows the Feast of the Holy Trinity, to show us
this profound connection. Through the Holy Eucharist, we are invited into the Trinitarian
communion and then sent into the world to carry Jesus to others so that they all may
join in the eternal Feast! The Eucharist is a gift to be received and lived, to unfold
into a dynamic, daily encounter with a living God who calls us to continual conversion
in the Eucharistic Christ. Reflecting on the feast of Corpus Christi, Pope Benedict
XVI said that for him it is a day on which heaven and earth work together. The feast
itself grows out of the mystery of Easter and Pentecost: it presupposes the Resurrection
and the sending of the Spirit. But it is also in close proximity to the Feast of the
Trinity, which reveals the inner logic in the connection between Easter and Pentecost.
It is only because God himself is the eternal dialogue of love that he can speak and
be spoken to. Only because he himself is relationship can we relate to him; only because
he is love can he love and be loved in return; only because he is threefold can he
be the grain of wheat which dies and the bread of eternal life. Ultimately, then,
Corpus Christi is an expression of faith in God, in love, in the fact that God is
love. Corpus Christi tells us: Yes, there is such a thing as love, and therefore there
is transformation, therefore there is hope. And hope gives us the strength to live
and face the world. During his homily on the feast of Corpus Christi, Pope Benedict
XVI spoke on the fact that Jesus as a sign of his presence chose bread and wine. With
each one of the two signs he gives himself completely, not only in part. The Risen
One is not divided. He is a person who, through signs, comes near to us and unites
himself to us. Each sign however, represents in its own way a particular aspect of
his mystery and through its respective manifestation, wishes to speak to us so that
we learn to understand the mystery of Jesus Christ a little better. During the procession
and in adoration we look at the consecrated Host, the simplest type of bread and nourishment,
made only of a little flour and water. In this way, it appears as the food of the
poor, those to whom the Lord made himself closest in the first place. Jesus during
the Last Supper, giving the bread and wine to the disciples used those unforgettable
words: "Take this, this is my body", and "This is my blood, the blood of the covenant,
to be poured out on behalf of many". The Pope says that the entire history of God
with humanity is recapitulated in these words. The past alone is not only referred
to and interpreted, but the future is anticipated - the coming of the Kingdom of God
into the world. What Jesus says are not simply words. What he says is an event, the
central event of the history of the world and of our personal lives. The prayer,
with which the Church, during the liturgy of the Mass, consigns this bread to the
Lord, qualifies it as fruit of the earth and the work of human persons, continues
the Holy Father. It involves human labour, the daily work of those who till the soil,
sow and harvest and finally prepare the bread. However, bread is not purely and simply
what we produce, something made by us; it is fruit of the earth and therefore is also
a gift. We cannot take credit for the fact that the earth produces fruit; the Creator
alone could make it fertile. It implies the synergy of the forces of earth and the
gifts from above, that is, of the sun and the rain. And water too, which we need to
prepare the bread, cannot be produced by us. Thus looking closely at this little
piece of white Host, this bread of the poor appears to us as a synthesis of creation.
Heaven and earth, too, like the activity and spirit of man, cooperate. In this way
we begin to understand why the Lord chooses this piece of bread to represent him.
Creation, with all of its gifts, aspires above and beyond itself to something even
greater. Over and above the synthesis of its own forces, above and beyond the synthesis
also of nature and of spirit that, in some way, we detect in the piece of bread, creation
is projected towards divinization, toward the holy wedding feast, toward unification
with the Creator himself. The Lord mentions its deepest mystery on Palm Sunday, when
some Greeks asked to see him. He tells them: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a
grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it
bears much fruit". Explaining the relationship between Eucharist and new life,
the Pope says that we have the mystery of the Passion is hidden in the bread made
of ground grain. Flour, the ground wheat, presupposes the death and resurrection of
the grain. In being ground and baked, it carries in itself once again the same mystery
of the Passion. Only through death does resurrection arrive, as does the fruit and
new life. In the Mediterranean culture it was understood that in the very grain of
wheat is hidden like a sign of the hope of creation which truly came about in Christ.
Through his gratuitous suffering and death, he became bread for all of us, and with
this living and certain hope. He accompanies us in all of our sufferings until death.
The paths that he travels with us and through which he leads us to life are pathways
of hope. When, in adoration, we look at the consecrated Host, the sign of creation
speaks to us. Thus we encounter the greatness of his gift; but we also encounter the
Passion, the Cross of Jesus and his Resurrection. Through this gaze of adoration,
he draws us toward himself, within his mystery, through which he wants to transform
us as he transformed the Host. On the feast of Corpus Christi says Pope Benedict,
we especially look at the sign of bread. It reminds us of the pilgrimage of Israel
during the 40 years in the desert. The Host is our manna whereby the Lord nourishes
us - it is truly the bread of heaven, through which he gives himself. In the procession
we follow this sign and in this way we follow Christ himself. And we ask of him: Guide
us on the paths of our history! Show the Church and her Pastors again and again the
right path! Look at suffering humanity, cautiously seeking a way through so much doubt;
look upon the physical and mental hunger that torments it! Give men and women bread
for body and soul! Give them work! Give them light! Give them yourself! Purify and
sanctify all of us! Make us understand that only through participation in your Passion,
through "yes" to the cross, to self-denial, to the purifications that you impose upon
us, our lives can mature and arrive at true fulfilment. Gather us together from all
corners of the earth. Unite your Church, unite wounded humanity! Give us your salvation!
Amen.