Corpus Christi

From an 1864 homily by Cardinal Manning:

Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster

“Corpus Christi is a second Feast of the Nativity; a Christmas festival in the summer-tide, when the snows are gone, and flowers cover the earth. And whence comes all this joy but from the divine fact which St. John declares: “The Word was made Flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory”? Morning by morning, in the holy Mass, the Church recites this great charter of its incorporation and of its existence. Morning by morning it bears witness to the divine, permanent, and immutable presence of Jesus in the fulness of grace and truth. The Blessed Sacrament is the Incarnation perpetually present, manifested to faith, and I may say, under a veil, to sense, and applied to us by the same divine power by which it was accomplished.”

Corpus Christi

On this Solemnity of Corpus Christi (the Body and Blood of Chris) a reflection from St. John Chrysostom is good to consider:

“Since we are talking about the Body, know that we, as many of us as partake of the Body, as many as partake of that Blood, we partake of something which is in no way different or separate from that which is enthroned on high, which is adored by the angels, which is next to Uncorrupt Power.”

Corpus Christi

Our true adoration — of God Himself.

“O Jesus, you instituted this Sacrament, not through any desire to draw some advantage from it for yourself, but solely moved by love which has no other measure than to be without measure. You instituted this Sacrament because your love exceeds all words. Burning with love for us, you desired to give yourself to us and took up your dwelling in the consecrated Host, entirely and forever, until the end of time. And you did this, not only to give us a memorial of your death which is our salvation, but you did it also, to remain with us entirely and forever.”

St. Angela of Foligno

Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it, Flannery O’Connor’s insight into eucharistic coherence

One of the authors that I believe we have to look to for insight when it comes to sacramentality is the great southern woman, Flannery O’Connor. The great feast of Corpus Christi is this weekend.

Here is a reflection for us on the Vigil of Corpus et Sanguis Christi:

“I was once, five or six years ago, taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater. (She just wrote that book, A Charmed Life). She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual.

We went at eight and at one, I hadn’t opened my mouth once, there being nothing for me in such company to say. The people who took me were Robert Lowell and his now wife, Elizabeth Hardwick. Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them.

Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the ‘most portable’ person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one.

I then said, in a very shaky voice, ‘Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.’ That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.”

Washed in Christ’s blood St Catherine’s parishioners take to NYC streets for Corpus Christi

Yesterday was the great feast of The Solemnity of the
Body and Blood of Christ. At Saint Catherine of Siena Church in New York City
the parish community with the Dominican Friars led by Father Jordan Kelly
celebrated a Solemn Mass for the feast and then took to the streets with the Monstrance containing Our Lord and Savior. For the
first time in years Our Lord in His Eucharistic Presence was carried in
procession in the neighborhood of the church. Imagine the faces of Catholics, Christians, Jews, Muslims and those who do not share our Eucharistic faith seeing such display of faith and devotion!

Graces beyond imagining:
beautiful weather, lots of people, terrific sacred music given to our worship
by Daniel B. Sañez and his superb choir, an insightful homily and a rededication to the Sacred Heart with Benediction after an extended period of adoration.

I
came across this reflection from Saint John Chrysostom:

If we wish to
understand the power of Christ’s blood, we should go back to the ancient
account of its prefiguration in Egypt. ‘Sacrifice a lamb without blemish’,
commanded Moses, ‘and sprinkle its blood on your doors’. If we were to ask him
what he meant, and how the blood of an irrational beast could possibly save
people endowed with reason, his answer would be that the saving power lies not
in the blood itself, but in the fact that it is a sign of the Lord’s blood. In
those days, when the destroying angel saw the blood on the doors he did not
dare to enter, so how much less will the devil approach now when he sees, not
that figurative blood on the doors, but the true blood on the lips of
believers, the doors of the temple of Christ.

Indeed, washed in Chris’s blood,
and not that of a animal is what saves, and we ought to scream this from the
roof tops. Well, we actually didn’t yell anything but we walked together in
professing our faith.

The Church of Saint Catherine of Siena NYC will never be the same! Thanks be to God.

Lauda Sion Salvatorem: Corpus Christi a Mysterical renunion

The feast of Corpus Christi has a rich fare to savor: prayers, Bible readings, music, and poetic texts. The point of the Church offering us this opportunity to honor the Eucharistic Presence is to extend in our lives a deeper grace given in Communion theology, to have a closer with the Lord in His promised hundredfold. It is, of course, a deepening in our lives what the Lord Himself did and gave to us on Holy Thursday with Eucharist and the priesthood.

The Sequence (the poetry which follows the second lesson at Mass and directly precedes the Alleluia verse), Lauda Sion Salvatorem, is ideally fitting for the sacred Liturgy. Google this masterpiece of poetry expressing theology in a way that stimulates prayer and deepens one’s faith.

The English priest Father Ronald Knox offers a perspective on what we’re doing in observing the great feast of the Lord’s Body and Blood. The following is taken from his meditation on Corpus Christi:

Like the Jewish Temple, the Christian altar is the rallying point of God’s people. The whole notion of Christian solidarity grows out of, and is centered in, the common participation of a common Table. The primitive Church in Jerusalem broke bread day be day from house to house; its stronghold of peace was not any local centre, but a common meal. Christian people, however separated by long distances of land or sea, still meet together in full force, by a mystical reunion, whenever and wherever the Bread is broken and the Cup blessed.

Corpus Christi 2012

The observance of Corpus Christi, sometimes called Corpus Domini (The Body of the Lord). In places like Rome, the traditional day to observe this feast is Thursday, connecting with Holy Thursday. A portion of the Pope’s homily is noted below (the full text is here).

… the sacredness of the Eucharist. Also here we heard in the recent past of a certain misunderstanding of the authentic message of Sacred Scripture. The Christian novelty in regard to worship was influenced by a certain secularist mentality of the 60s and 70s of the past century. It is true, and it remains always valid, that the center of worship is now no longer in the rites and ancient sacrifices, but in Christ himself, in his person, in his life, in his paschal mystery. And yet, from this fundamental novelty it must not be concluded that the sacred no longer exists, but that it has found its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, incarnate divine Love. The Letter to the Hebrews, which we heard this evening in the Second Reading, speaks to us precisely of the novelty of the priesthood of Christ, “high priest of the good things that have come” (Hebrews 9:11), but it does not say that the priesthood is finished. Christ “is the mediator of a new covenant” (Hebrews 9:15), established in his blood, which purifies our “conscience from dead works” (Hebrews 9:14). He did not abolish the sacred, but brought it to fulfillment, inaugurating a new worship, which is, yes, fully spiritual but which however, so long as we are journeying in time, makes use again of signs and rites, of which there will be no need only at the end, in the heavenly Jerusalem, where there will no longer be a temple (cf. Revelation 21:22). Thanks to Christ, the sacred is more true, more intense and, as happens with the Commandments, also more exacting! Ritual observance is not enough, but what is required is the purification of the heart and the involvement of life.

Pope Benedict XVI

Corpus Christi at the Basilica of St. John Lateran

7 June 2012

Corpus Christi is God’s expression of love that doesn’t consume

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. All that is said and done on Corpus Christi
is in fact a single variation on the theme of love, what it is and what it
does. In one of his Corpus Christi hymns Thomas Aquinas puts it beautifully:
love does not consume: it gives and, in giving, receives. And in giving it is
not used up but renews itself.

Since Corpus Christi is a confession of faith in
love, it is totally appropriate that the day should focus on the mystery of
transubstantiation. Love is transubstantiation, transformation. 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 love
and face the world.

Perhaps it was good to have experienced doubts about the
meaning of celebrating Corpus Christi, for it has led us to the rediscovery of
a feast which, today, we need more than ever.

Pope Benedict XVI Benedictus

The Church can’t live without the Eucharist, Pope Benedict reminds

Here’s the Pope’s Angelus address from earlier today. Notice the key points.

Today in Italy and other countries Corpus Domini is
celebrated, the feast of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of
the Lord, which he instituted with the Last Supper and which is the Church’s
most precious treasure. The Eucharist is like the beating heart that gives life
to the whole mystical body of the Church: a social organism entirely founded on
the spiritual but concrete link with Christ. As the Apostle Paul states: “Because
there is one bread, we, although many, are one body: all of us in fact
participate in the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:17).

Without the Eucharist the
Church simply would not exist. It is the Eucharist in fact that makes a human
community a mystery of communion, able to bring God to the world and the world
to God. The Holy Spirit, which transforms the bread and wine into the Body and
Blood of Christ, also transforms into members of the Body of Christ those who
receive it with faith, so that the Church is truly the sacrament of the unity
of men with God and of men with each other.

In a culture that is ever more
individualistic — like that in which Western societies are immersed and which
is spreading throughout the world — the Eucharist constitutes a kind of “antidote,”
which operates in the minds and hearts of believers and continually sows in them
the logic of communion, of service, of sharing, in a word, the logic of the
Gospel. The first Christians, in Jerusalem, were an evident sign of this new
way of life because they lived in fraternity and held all of their goods in
common so that no one should be indigent (cf. Acts 2:42-47). Where did all of
this come from? From the Eucharist, that is, the risen Christ, really present
with his disciples and working with the power of the Holy Spirit. And in the
succeeding generations, through the centuries, the Church, despite human limits
and errors, continued to be a force for communion in the world. We think
especially of the most difficult periods, the periods of trial: What did it
mean, for example, for countries that were under the heal of totalitarian regimes
to have the possibility to gather for Sunday Mass! As the ancient martyrs of
Abitene proclaimed: “Sine Dominico non possumus” – without the “Dominicum,” that is, the Sunday Eucharist, we cannot live. But the
void produced by false freedom can be dangerous, and so communion with the Body
of Christ is a medicine of the intellect and will to rediscover taste for the
truth and the common good.

Dear friends, let us call upon the Virgin Mary, whom
my predecessor, Blessed John Paul II defined as a “Eucharistic woman”
(Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 53-58). In her school our life too becomes fully “Eucharistic,”
open to God and to others, able to transform evil into good by the power of
love, which fosters unity, communion, fraternity.

Corpus Christi in Rome 2011

The feast of Corpus Domini is inseparable from the Holy
Thursday Mass of in Caena Domini, in which the institution of the Eucharist is
also celebrated. While on the evening of Holy Thursday we relive the mystery of
Christ who offers himself to us in the bread broken and wine poured out, today,
in celebration of Corpus Domini, this same mystery is proposed to the adoration
and meditation of God’s people, and the Blessed Sacrament is carried in
procession through the streets of towns and villages, to show that the risen
Christ walks among us and guides us towards the Kingdom of heaven. Today we
openly manifest what Jesus has given us in the intimacy of the Last Supper,
because the love of Christ is not confined to the few, but is intended for all.
This year during the Mass of Our Lord’s Last Supper on Holy Thursday, I pointed
out that the Eucharist is the transformation of the gifts of this land – the
bread and wine – intended to transform our lives and usher in the
transformation of the world. Tonight I would like to return to this point of
view.

Everything starts, you might say, from the heart of Christ, who at the
Last Supper on the eve of his passion, thanked and praised God and, in doing
so, with the power of his love transformed the meaning of death which he was
about to encounter. The fact that the Sacrament of the altar has taken on the
name “Eucharist” – “thanksgiving” – expresses this: that
the change in the substance of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of
Christ is the fruit of the gift that Christ made of himself, a gift of a love
stronger than death, love of God which made him rise from the dead. That is why
the Eucharist is the food of eternal life, the Bread of life. From the heart of
Christ, from his “Eucharistic Prayer” on the eve of his passion,
flows the dynamism that transforms reality in its cosmic, human and historical
dimensions. All proceeds from God, from the omnipotence of his love One and
Triune, incarnate in Jesus. In this Love the heart of Christ emerges, so He
knows how to thank and praise God even in the face of betrayal and violence, and
thus changes things, people and the world.

Continue reading Corpus Christi in Rome 2011