Solemnity of Corpus Christi

Pope Francis
via Texas Catholic

SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST

This Solemnity goes back to the thirteenth century. It was first established in the diocese of Liége, and Pope Urban IV instituted it in 1264 for the whole Church. The meaning of this feast is the consideration of and devotion to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The center of the feast was to be, as Pope Urban IV described it, a popular devotion reflected in hymns and joy. In the same year Saint Thomas Aquinas, at the Pope's request, composed for this day two Offices which have nourished the piety of many Christians throughout the centuries. In many different places the procession with the Monstrance through specially bedecked streets gives testimony of the Christian people's faith and love for Christ, who once again passes through our cities and towns. The procession began in the same way as the feast itself.

For many years God fed manna to the people of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness. This was an image and symbol of the pilgrim church and of each individual who journeys towards his or her definitive homeland -- Heaven. That food given in the desert of Sinai is a figure of the true food, the Holy Eucharist. This is the sacrament of the human pilgrimage ... Precisely because of this, the annual feast of the Eucharist that the Church celebrates today contains within its liturgy so many references to the pilgrimage of the people of the Covenant in their wanderings through the wilderness (John Paul II)....

Today is a day of thanksgiving and of joy because God has wanted to remain with us in order to feed us and to strengthen us, so that we many never feel alone. The Holy Eucharist is the viaticum, the food for the long journey of our days on Earth towards the goal of true Life. Jesus accompanies us and strengthens us here in this world, where our life is like a shadow compared to the reality that awaits us. Earthly food is a pale image of the food we receive in Holy Communion. The Holy Eucharist opens up our hearts to a completely new reality.

In Conversation With God Vol 6
Daily Meditations, Special Feasts: January - June

The Feast of Corpus Christi is a moveable feast, which means that it depends on the date of Easter Sunday. Corpus Christi is celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, which falls one week after Pentecost Sunday. As is often the case, many U.S. bishops have moved it to Sunday in their dioceses.

Some excellent historical information can be found in an old post at The Fathers of the Church where Mike Aquilina fills us in this feast and about the reality for the Church from the beginning.

One of the most telling pieces of evidence, to me, that this reality was the view of the early Christians on the Eucharist comes from St. Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Smyrnaeans (ca. AD 106) which was written about ten years after the death of the Apostle John. That means there wasn't time enough for him to have gotten "confused on this issue" (via John Bergsma, Word of the Lord, Year A).

But consider those who are of a different opinion with respect to the grace of Christ which has come unto us, how opposed they are to the will of God. ...

They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His greatness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. (emphasis added)

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST

This Solemnity goes back to the thirteenth century. It was first established in the diocese of Liége, and Pope Urban IV instituted it in 1264 for the whole Church. The meaning of this feast is the consideration of and devotion to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The center of the feast was to be, as Pope Urban IV described it, a popular devotion reflected in hymns and joy. In the same year Saint Thomas Aquinas, at the Pope's request, composed for this day two Offices which have nourished the piety of many Christians throughout the centuries. In many different places the procession with the Monstrance through specially bedecked streets gives testimony of the Christian people's faith and love for Christ, who once again passes through our cities and towns. The procession began in the same way as the feast itself.

In places where the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood is not observed as a holy day of obligation, it is kept on the Sunday after the Most Holy Trinity as its proper day.

For many years God fed manna to the people of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness. This was an image and symbol of the pilgrim church and of each individual who journeys towards his or her definitive homeland -- Heaven. That food given in the desert of Sinai is a figure of the true food, the Holy Eucharist. This is the sacrament of the human pilgrimage ... Precisely because of this, the annual feast of the Eucharist that the Church celebrates today contains within its liturgy so many references to the pilgrimage of the people of the Covenant in their wanderings through the wilderness (John Paul II)....

Today is a day of thanksgiving and of joy because God has wanted to remain with us in order to feed us and to strengthen us, so that we many never feel alone. The Holy Eucharist is the viaticum, the food for the long journey of our days on Earth towards the goal of true Life. Jesus accompanies us and strengthens us here in this world, where our life is like a shadow compared to the reality that awaits us. Earthly food is a pale image of the food we receive in Holy Communion. The Holy Eucharist opens up our hearts to a completely new reality.

In Conversation With God Vol 6
Daily Meditations, Special Feasts: January - June

Some excellent historical information can be found at The Way of the Father about this feast and about the reality for the Church from the beginning.

Corpus Christi ... The Reality of the Eucharist

For me, Eucharistic chat is all well and good, but it does not make me believe in the Real Presence. What does that is the Eucharist itself - with each encounter, with each breaking of the bread, with each hour of Adoration, Jesus’ Real Presence becomes more undeniable as he reels me in and I flop down before him, a landed grouper, both unable to escape and not wanting to. For me, His Presence in the Eucharist cannot be talked…it must be experienced. A half-hour before the monstrance, an hour before a closed tabernacle in an empty church…nothing compares, nothing instructs so sweetly, or sears me with such unrelenting gentleness. John Paul II wrote every one of his encyclicals while seated before the Tabernacle in his chapel.

This is also my experience of the reality of the Eucharist. The Anchoress has given us a veritable feast for contemplation in preparation of this coming Sunday's Solemnity of Corpus Christi. Included in that, she leads us to a deacon whose site I certainly shall be visiting often in the future.

In 1995, a Gallup poll reported that only 30 percent of Catholics – less than a third -- believe in the Real Presence, that the bread and wine truly become the body and blood of Christ. Another 30 percent said it’s just a symbol.

I wish they could see what I've seen.

A few years ago, my wife and I had the good fortune to make a pilgrimage through Italy. One of the stops was in a town called Lanciano.

About 1200 years ago, a priest there had begun to doubt the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Then one morning, during mass, he was stunned to discover that the bread and wine in his hands had become actual flesh and blood.

Today, it’s been preserved in a glass case, on its own altar. You can walk around it and see the host from many different angles. The blood has congealed naturally into five distinct pellets – just like the five wounds of Christ. In 1970, scientists were given permission to take samples and analyze it.

They weren’t prepared for what they found.

The bread is actually myocardial tissue -- tissue from the heart.

And what had been wine is, in fact, type AB blood. The universal recipient blood type.

It has been so perfectly preserved, the investigators ruled out any kind of fraud. They determined it was human, and could not have come from a cadaver, or it would have spoiled.

Instead, the flesh and blood that were hundreds of years old appeared new.

In other words: ageless.

Do go read all of both, as well as The Anchoress' linked posts at the bottom.