CORPUS CHRISTI

Sunday 6 June 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

At the heart of the Christian Gospel is the Good News that God became one of us so that he might reconcile us to himself through his death and Resurrection. The Incarnation—God the Son coming down from heaven and taking human nature in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary—is a divine action of amazing generosity and love. We celebrate this mystery at recurring times during the Church year: most especially at the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25^th, and nine months later at the Feast of the Nativity on December 25^th.

In a well-known passage in his Letter to the Philippians, Saint Paul describes the self-emptying and self-abasement of the Son of God: “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” This self-emptying is the prerequisite to his glorification. “Therefore,” Paul writes—and that “therefore” is pivotal to the passage’s structure and meaning—“God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

By extension, the Incarnate Lord manifests this same self-emptying love when he gives himself to us in the Blessed Sacrament of his Body and Blood. He makes his saving Death and Resurrection present and available in all times and places by means of the simple signs of bread and wine, the material elements of human nourishment and delight. So we have a double movement of divine self-giving. Without in any way diminishing the infinite gulf separating the Creator from creation, God makes himself present and available to us as a human being, Jesus of Nazareth, who in turn makes himself present and available to us in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood.

Every day, on hundreds of thousands of altars all over the world, he continues to give himself to us in this Sacrament just as he once gave himself to us by his conception in the Virgin’s womb, and indeed by his suffering and death on the cross for our salvation. As Aidan Nichols, O. P. puts it: Christ continues to pour himself out, as the celebrant pours the wine into the chalice, and to distribute himself as his priests distribute the Host to innumerable disciples. We worship a God whose very métier is self-giving.

The feast of Corpus Christi proper fell this past Thursday. It comes every year exactly nine weeks after Maundy Thursday. Since 1969, however, the option has existed of transferring it to the following Sunday so that more people can join in the celebration, as is the custom here at St. Uriel’s.

The feast dates back to the thirteenth century. It was first conceived in Flanders by Juliana of Liège, a Norbertine canoness of considerable holiness. In her youth, Juliana had a vision of the moon partially eclipsed by a dark spot. Interpreting the vision, she discerned that the moon represented the Church reflecting the light of Christ to the world. The shadow represented the absence of any feast in the Church calendar celebrating the Sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood above and beyond the commemoration of the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday. Every year during Holy Week the Church recalls the Institution of the Eucharist, but always in the context of impending betrayal and death. The Maundy Thursday Mass is always celebrated at night, as was the original Last Supper as described in Saint John’s Gospel. There, night symbolizes the darkness of human sin that brings Jesus to the cross.

Juliana recognized in her vision the need for another Thursday on which to celebrate the gift of the Eucharist in the light of day—the daylight recapitulating the joy of Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost. Although Juliana kept her vision secret for some twenty years, when it finally came to the attention of her bishop, Robert of Liège, he ordered the celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi in his diocese on the Thursday following Trinity Sunday beginning in 1246. Eighteen years later, in 1264, Pope Urban IV, who had served as Archdeacon in Liège, instituted Corpus Christi as a feast for the entire Latin Church. He then commissioned Saint Thomas Aquinas to write the Office and Mass for its celebration [including the wonderful sequence Lauda Sion Salvatorem, a version of which we’ll be singing at the end of this Mass].

The feast of Corpus Christi asks us to reflect on the place of Eucharistic adoration in our spiritual lives. One of the blessings of the liturgical renewal of the past fifty years or so in the Western Church has been a revived emphasis on receiving Communion as the normal practice of God’s people at every celebration of the Mass. In the Episcopal Church, the 1979 Prayer Book finally and definitively established the Holy Eucharist as the principal act of worship every Sunday and major holy day. Prior to that, many Episcopal parishes offered only Morning Prayer at the main service on most Sundays. So, the Liturgical Movement has brought us some definite gains.

The risk is that as we become habituated to receiving Holy Communion every Sunday and possibly once or more during the week as well, we may well be tempted to take such a wonderful gift for granted. It can all too easily become a rote action, omitting the careful spiritual preparation that the Church recommends beforehand, and the loving thanksgiving that is so appropriate afterwards. In this context, the celebration of Corpus Christi refocuses our attention on Christ’s great gift of the Sacrament of his Body and Blood, calling forth our gratitude, adoration, and awe.

So, as is the annual custom at many Anglo-Catholic parishes, including St. Uriel’s, we begin another summer on a note of victory and triumph. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the risen and ascended Christ remains present with his people in the Blessed Sacrament. And Corpus Christi devotions such as the solemn Procession and Benediction call to mind the procession of the pilgrim Church through history, sharing the blessings of the Gospel with all people, until Christ comes again to gather all creation into his kingdom and bring us home to our final destination in the light of God’s glory.