FEAST OF THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
This
weekend we celebrate the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, a melding of
two former feasts. Until a few years ago the church celebrated the “body” on
one day (Feast of Corpus Christi) and the “blood” (Feast of the Precious Blood)
on another.
Even
though the church encourages us at every Mass to spend a brief period of
silence after communion, this Feast encourages us to spend some longer
devotional time before the Blessed Sacrament so we can reflect more deeply on
this great mystery. I believe the pastor here moved the tabernacle back to the
center so that people would recapture that quiet time before Mass to prepare themselves
for this great celebration. The time spent reflecting on this great mystery
reminds us that we become what we eat so that we too can become the self-giving Christ
for others.
The
evolution of the Last Supper into the Mass we know today is quite
interesting.
Did you
know that the first record of the Eucharist was not the story of the Last
Supper in the various gospel accounts. The stories of the Last Supper were actually
written down later. The very first record of the Last Supper comes from the First Letter of
Paul to the Corinthians written in about 54 AD.
Brothers and sisters:
I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,
that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over,
took bread, and, after he had given thanks,
broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me."
In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying,
"This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
I Corinthians 11:23-26
The first
Last Supper account, from the Gospel of Mark was probably written 66-70 AD,
about 12 to 16 years later than the Last Supper account from St. Paul’s First
Letter to the Corinthians.
At the
time of Paul, when he composed our second reading today to the Corinthians, it
was customary for Christians to hold an “agape meal” before the Eucharist. It
was some sort of pot-luck dinner that the rich and the poor shared. However, in
Corinth things had gotten a little out of control and the art of sharing was
being lost. The rich would not share their food, but ate it in little exclusive
groups by themselves, hurrying through it so they did not have to share, while
the poor went with almost nothing. Some of the participants even got drunk at
these meals. Did you know that Paul basically reams them out for their drunkenness
in this same letter we read from today? And we think we have problems with
things like when to sit and when to stand which keep changing!
Did you
know that St. Clement of Alexandra had to write a letter to his people in the
year 200 about the problem of lengthy mouth-to-mouth kissing during the sign of
peace?
Did you
know that in the year 350, the Council of Nicea actually outlawed the practice
of kneeling during Mass as “novel,” preferring the older custom of standing as
the proper way of praying at the Eucharist?
Did you
know that the Mass changed from Greek to Latin in 384 so that people could
understand and participate in their own language – Latin! Even in the old Latin
Mass, we had some hang-over Greek words – words like Kyrie Eleison are
Greek words, not Latin words! It wasn’t changed again until 1963, when we went
to English, for the same reason – so that people could understand and
participate in their own language?
Did you
know that lay people had their parts of the Mass taken away around the year
1000 and they were not restored to them till Vatican Council II? Growing up the
priest and the altar boys, and maybe the choir, interacted while people said
the rosary or read along from their missals in silence. The Mass today is
more like it was in the church’s early years than it was when most of our older
members like me were growing up.
Did you
know that tabernacles in churches did not start till the 12th century and did
not become standard until the 17th century? Did you know that
Protestants invented pews? Catholics had been using chairs, as we do here in
our Cathedral, just as they do in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome today and in
most European Cathedrals? There weren’t even chairs in the early church. People
stood, even during long homilies. They did provide a bench along the walls for
the sick and elderly.
Did you
know that so few people were going to communion in the 13th century, because
they considered it too sacred to receive, that the Pope had to make a law
saying people must receive communion at least once a year? It came to be called
our “Easter duty.” Did you know that veneration of the Blessed Sacrament at
Benediction and the custom of Corpus Christi processions became a substitute
for receiving communion during this period?
The
feast we celebrate today didn’t come till the 13th century. This was when
things began to really change. This is why and how all these “new developments”
that did not exist in the first 11-12 centuries of our church came about.
In 1263
a German priest, Fr. Peter of Prague, made a pilgrimage to Rome. He stopped in
Italy to celebrate Mass at the Church of St. Christina. At the time he was
having doubts about Jesus being truly present in the Blessed Sacrament. He was
affected by the growing debate among certain theologians who, for the first
time in the history of the Church, began introducing doubts about the Body and
Blood of Christ being actually present in the consecrated bread and wine. In
response to his doubt, according to tradition, when he recited the prayer of
consecration as he celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, blood supposedly started
seeping from the consecrated host and onto the altar and corporal.
Fr.
Peter reported this miracle to Pope Urban IV, who at the time was nearby in
Orvieto. The pope sent delegates to investigate and ordered that host and
blood-stained corporal be brought to Orvieto. These were then placed in the
Cathedral of Orvieto, where they remain today.
This
Eucharistic miracle confirmed the reported visions given to St. Juliana of
Belgium just a few years before. St. Juliana was a nun and mystic who had a
series of visions in which she said she was instructed to work to establish a liturgical feast for
the Holy Eucharist, to which she had a great devotion.
After
many years of trying, she finally convinced the bishop, the future Pope Urban
IV, to create this special feast in honor of the Blessed Sacrament, where none
had existed before. Soon after her death, Pope Urban instituted Corpus Christi
for the Universal Church and celebrated it for the first time in Orvieto in
1264 – in the mid13th century - a year after the Eucharistic miracle
that had been reported to him.
Inspired
by the miracle, Pope Urban IV commissioned a Dominican friar, St. Thomas
Aquinas, to compose a Mass and Liturgy of the Hours for the feast of Corpus
Christi. Saint Thomas Aquinas' hymns in honor of the Holy Eucharist, Pange
Lingua, Tantum Ergo, Panis Angelicus, and O Salutaris
Hostia are the beloved hymns the Church sings on the feast of Corpus
Christi as well as throughout the year during Exposition, Benediction of the
Blessed Sacrament and in Corpus Christi Processions when the Blessed Sacrament
is carried through the streets.
Some of
you older folks, my age and older, might remember the Corpus Christi
Processions of the past. The Holy Name Society of Holy Name Church, out on Third
Street near U of L, under the direction of Monsignor Timoney its pastor,
sponsored a local Corpus Christi Procession. It was held originally where
Bellarmine University is now, but he had it moved to Churchill Downs. An
account from 1952, says that 50,000 Catholics from the area around Louisville
attended on a Sunday afternoon. There were other processions out in the country
in places like Flaherty. I can remember marching with my father, uncles,
brothers and other men from neighboring parishes down in Flaherty, Kentucky. Of
the 50,000 attendees here in Louisville, 15,000 men and boys marched around the
track at Churchill Downs, while 35,000 women and girls sat in the grandstand
and clubhouse. Devotional music was sung and the rosary was prayed. When all those
men were on the track in position, the Blessed Sacrament was carried from altar
to altar, until Benediction was finally celebrated with the newly ordained
priests serving as assistants to the main celebrant, usually the bishop or
archbishop. Those processions gradually died out in intensity after Vatican
Council II when receiving communion was again more stressed and are only a
memory except in a few places where they have been revived a couple of years
ago.
My friends, the Eucharist has undergone many changes in its form, but underneath all these additions and subtractions over the centuries, its essence is still the same. Baptized believers have gathered around bread and wine, having become the body and blood of Christ, to be nourished, energized, transformed and strengthened for over 2,000 years. It’s a family reunion. It’s bread for the journey and strength for the trip. It’s an intimate meeting between a loving God and his adopted children. It’s at the heart of what being a Catholic is all about. That is why we are here today – to celebrate what has been handed on to us in its essence from the Lord Jesus himself!
A PRAYER FOR PERSONAL CHANGE AND TRANSFORMATION