A Blessed Feast of Corpus Christi
to all of you.
As on Maundy Thursday, we celebrate the Body of Christ -- but this time without the sense of impending doom of knowing what would come on Good Friday. God, in His infinite Majesty not only became man, but becomes our Heavenly Bread, our manna, our Source of spiritual life.
The Feast of Corpus Christi -- which is always on the Thursday following Trinity Sunday -- has an interesting history. Its inspiration is due to two things: the first is the Miracle of Bolsena, which happened in A.D. 1263. Peter of Prague, a German priest, during a pilgrimage to Rome, stopped at the Church of St. Christina there to offer Mass. While he was a holy and devout man, he harbored doubts about the Real Presence -- doubts which were completely resolved when the Host he consecrated during that Mass began to bleed. He rushed to meet Pope Urban IV in Orvieto, bringing the Host with him. The miracle was declared, and the Host is still on display at the Cathedral of Orvieto today.
The second source of inspiration was an Augustinian nun, a Belgian named St. Juliana of Mont Cornillon (A.D. 1193-1258). She had a vision of the Moon that was full and beautiful, but marked by a black spot that signified that there was no joyous celebration of the Eucharist in the entire Church calendar.
In response to both of the above, Pope Urban IV eventually published a Bull, Transiturus, in A.D. 1264, which made this Feast a part of the calendar.
The Mass includes the Lauda Sion Sequence by St. Thomas Aquinas, and a procession followed by the greatest Eucharistic hymns of the Church, also written by St. Thomas especially for this Feast. These include Sacris Solemnis, Ave Verum, Adoro Te, and Verbum Supernum (the last two verses of Verbum Supernum are the lyrics to the hymn "O Salutaris Hostia").
Eucharistic processions are held today, and in still relatively Catholic countries, those who live along the procession route decorate their homes with greenery, floral wreaths, and banners, and put candles in the windows. Rose petals are strewn in the path the Sacrament takes. Bystanders fall to their knees as Our Eucharistic Lord is carried past them.
For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. For which cause God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above all names: That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth: And that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:5-9
This is how Maria Von Trapp recalls Corpus Christi in her native country:
On the Thursday after the octave of the Pentecost falls the feast of Corpus Christi -- the feast of the Holy Eucharist. The actual anniversary of the institution of the Blessed Sacrament is celebrated on Holy Thursday, but on this day the Church cannot summon the proper festive mood, because of all the other happenings following the Last Supper, which she also has to commemorate. For this reason this used to be the great feast day at summer's beginning, with its distinctive feature the solemn procession, after the High Mass, in which the Blessed Sacrament was carried through the streets and over the fields and meadows. Such a Corpus Christi day belong among our most beautiful memories.
The day before, the big boys of the village cut young trees in the woods, usually birch, and plant them on either side of the road along which the priest will carry the Blessed Sacrament. From the village inn you hear the brass band having a last rehearsal, while mothers pin-curl the hair of their little girls. Everybody is preparing his finery for the great day. The Association of Voluntary Firemen come in their best uniforms and brass helmets. The war veterans will also be in uniform with big plumed hats. The big girls are making garlands by the yards which will span the street. All windows will be decorated, houses and families vying with each other: the best carpets, flanked by candles and flowers, are hung out the windows and statues and holy paintings are exhibited on them. Four times the procession will come to a halt, the priest will solemnly sing the beginning of one of the four Gospels and each time there will be a Solemn Benediction. At those four spots altars are erected and decorated with trees and greenry and a profusion of flowers and candles. A great deal of love and care and time goes into these processions.
Then comes the great day. The church choir gives its best at the Solemn High Mass and all the people attend from the mayor to the smallest child, for everybody wants to accompany Our Lord on His triumphal way. The procession is headed by an altar boy carrying a crucifix, followed by all the school children -- the girls in white, their veils held in place by wreaths of flowers, looking for all the world like so many little brides; the boys wearing a wreath of flowers on their left upper arm over their Sunday-best, just like "best men." Then come the fraternities with their banners and costumes. In the towns the convents would send every member they could spare. There would be the blue Vincentian Sisters with their coronets, looking like a group of doves, the white Dominican nuns, the brown Carmelites of the Third Order, the black Benedictines followed by the brown Franciscans, then the Mission Fathers and the bearded Capuchins followed by the secular clergy in their liturgical vestments. They are all like heralds of the great King Who is following now under the richly embroidedered baldachin carried by the four most important men of the community. The pastor carries the monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament. Two little girls are throwing flower petals out of baskets directly at the feet of Our Lord. Little altar boys alternate in ringing silver bells and swinging the censer from which rise billowing clouds, enveloping the Sanctissimum. On the right and on the left are marching solders carrying guns as if on parade. Behind the Blessed Sacrament follows the church choir, then a detachment of firemen, the war veterans in uniforms, and the rest of the community. At the very end of the procession comes the brass band playing hymns while everybody joins in the singing. The highlights for everybody, young and old, are the moments of benediction with the priest raising the monstrance for all to see and the soldiers lifting their guns and shooting their salute, while from the outskirts cannons resound with a thundering echo. I cannot rememer a single occasion when it rained on Corpus Christi Day. From a cloudless blue sky a hot June sun would shine. At the end of such a triumphal procession everyone from the oldest grandfather in a plumed hat to the smallest flower girl would be in a truly festive mood.
A gorgeous Italian tradition is l'infiorata: the laying out of flowers and their petals in elaborate mosaic-like displays on streets and roadways. This practice is done In Spello, Perugia; Cannara, Perguia; Diano Marina, Liguria; Genzano, Lazio; San Bartolomeo in Galdo, Campania; and Chiaravalle, Marche. During the days and nights before, hundreds and hundreds of people work to make the colorful displays. Miles-long stretches of road might be decorated in this manner in order to form a beautiful carpet on which the procession can make its way. These sorts of floral extravaganzas are carried out in places in Spain as well.
In Campobasso, Molise, Italy, the Sagra dei Misteri is held now -- a parade consisting of moving tableaux vivants depicting St. Isidore, San Crispino, San Gennaro, Abraham, St. Mary Magdalene, Saint Anthony Abbot, the Immaculate Conception, San Leonardo, San Rocco, St. Michael, the Assumption, St. Nicholas.and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Seventy-seven living actors dress as the characters they're depicting, form their tableaux vivants, and are borne on platforms throughout the city, each platform being carried by up to twenty-two people. They're followed by 100 musicians as they make their way along the streets and through the squares of the town's historic center.1
Oh, the joy of the immense glory the Church is sending up to God this hour! Verily as if the world was all unfallen still. We think, and, as we think, the thoughts are like so many successive tidal waves filling our whole souls with the fullness of delight, of all the thousands of Masses which are being said or sung the whole world over, and all rising with one note of blissful acclamation, from grateful creatures, to the majesty of our merciful Creator. How many glorious processions, with the sun upon their banners, are now wending their way round the squares of mighty cities, through the flower-strewn streets of Christian villages, through the antique cloisters of the glorious cathedral, or though the grounds of the devout seminary, where the various colours of the faces, and the different languages of the people are only so many fresh tokens of the unity of that Faith, which they are all exultingly professing in the single voice of the magnificent ritual of Rome! Upon how many altars of various architecture, amid sweet flowers and starry lights, amid clouds of humble incense, and the tumult of thrilling song, before thousands of prostrate worshippers, is the Blessed Sacrament raised for exposition, or taken down for Benediction! And how many blessed acts of faith and love, of triumph and reparation, do not each of these things surely represent! … Sin seems forgotten; tears even are of rapture rather than of penance. It is like the soul’s first day in Heaven; or as if earth itself were passing into Heaven, as it well might do, for sheer joy of the Blessed Sacrament.
Fr Frederick William Faber, founder of the London Oratory, in his Blessed Sacrament; or The Works And Ways Of God (1855).
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