
This wonderful feast of Corpus Christi comes to us from the high Middle
Ages. Stories and legends abound regarding its exact origin. One of them
tells how, in the year 1209, a Belgian Augustinian nun by the name of
Juliana of Liege, reported a vision she had had – a vision in which she
saw the full moon in all its splendor, but there was a dark area on one
side. As she interpreted the dream, the moon was the Church, and one
area was dark because there was no feast to honor the Sacrament of the
Eucharist.
Juliana must have been
one persuasive woman because Corpus Christi quickly became a local feast
and, fifty years later, it was being celebrated all over Europe!
The reason the feast
caught on so quickly is that at that moment in history, the Mass had
become almost exclusively the preserve of the clergy: it was celebrated
in Latin, a language the people no longer understood, and often, it was
celebrated in the far recesses of those great, cavernous gothic
cathedrals, surrounded with mystery and splendor, but far distant from
the people who had become passive observers, not active participants.
The feast of Corpus Christi gave people an outlet for their love and
devotion for this greatest of the sacraments as towns and villages began
to vie with each other in creating elaborate Corpus Christi
celebrations.
I have vivid memories of
one such celebration I took part in 60 years ago in the small Italian
hill town of Orvieto, fifty miles north of Rome. I was a seminarian
studying in Rome at the time and had gone up there with some friends to
take part in the what is one of the oldest Corpus Christi processions in
Europe.
I will never forget it.
The procession wound through the cobbled streets of the village
following Mass in the cathedral. Many people were dressed in the
distinctive garb of the trades and guilds of the Middle Ages: merchants,
millers, bakers, blacksmiths, builders, tailors, silversmiths. Then
there were choirs of monks and nuns, rank upon rank of clergy, children
strewing flowers, bright banners flying in the breeze, and dramatic long
silver trumpets heralding the arrival of the Blessed Sacrament carried
in the hands of the Bishop who walked under a brocaded canopy. It was a
memorable spectacle: a moving testimonial to faith both simple and
strong, a faith that intersected with life right where people lived it:
in the colorful streets and back alleys of an Italian hill town.
Now I doubt that many of
the people in that town could have given a sophisticated theological
explanation of how Christ is present in the Eucharist, but I have no
doubt whatever that they believed he was truly present. It’s that way
with us, too, I think. Even if we lack all the words to fully explain
this great mystery, we know that we are never more the Church, never
more the Body of Christ, than when we celebrate the Eucharist. And we
know, too, that without the Eucharist we would be deprived of life,
because the Eucharist is a food unparalleled in its power to give life,
altogether unique in the way it connects us with God, a food which, when
we eat it becomes part of us as normal food does, yes, but in a
wonderful way we also become part of the One we receive - become part of
Christ - part of his Body, the Church. And that changes everything – or
at least it should.
I remember reading about
a priest who celebrated Mass for Mother Teresa and her nuns. He related
how her face spoke of the absoluteness of her faith as she looked at the
host and spoke her “Amen.” “She clearly believed that Christ was
present,” he said. But he went on to say, “there was another moment when
Mother Teresa radiated a similar expression on her face – it was when
she was receiving a starving child, a broken old man, a filthy beggar, a
dying old woman. She saw Jesus in these people just as she saw him when
she received Holy Communion.”
The late twentieth
century Archbishop of Recife, Brazil, Dom Helder Camara, prophetic
apostle to the poor, embraced a similar theology of the Eucharist when
he wrote:
Am I mistaken, Lord, to
go forth and proclaim
The need and urgency
of passing from the Blessed Sacrament
To
your other presence just as real
In the
Eucharist of the poor?
Theologians will
argue,
A thousand distinctions will be
advanced,
But woe to the one who feeds on
You
And later has no eyes to see You
Foraging for food among the garbage
Living
in sub-human conditions
Under the sign of
utter destitution.
The traditional Corpus
Christi procession (we make this morning) proclaims this reality in a
powerful way. We honor the Eucharistic Body of Christ with song and
incense, flowers, bells, trumpets, and bagpipes. But we make the
procession outside on the street so that we will have a chance to open
our eyes to a whole world that exists outside this cathedral – a whole
world of people loved by God but divided by enormous inequities and
injustices, a world that Jesus looks upon as his Body.
Corpus Christi. The Body
of Christ. If the truth be told, it is probably easier to believe in the
Eucharistic Bread as the Body of Christ than to believe in God’s people
as the Body of Christ. But, my friends, we do not get to make that
choice. We do not get to make that choice!
Father Michael G. Ryan
|