“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you will have no life in you; he who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”    John 6:53-54

Novena for Corpus Christi

O Lord Jesus Christ, You who have given us Your precious Body and Blood to be our meat and drink, grant that through frequent reception of you in the Holy Eucharist, I may be strengthened in mind and body to do Your holy will.  Amen.

History

The Solemnity of Corpus Christi commemorates the institution of the Holy Eucharist, paralleling Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday) commemorating Our Lord’s institution of the Eucharist. Corpus Christi was introduced in the late 13th century to encourage the faithful to give special honor to the institution of the Holy Eucharist to the Blessed Sacrament. The official title of this Solemnity was changed in 1970 to the Body and Blood of Christ and it is still on the Roman Missal’s official Calendar for the universal church on Thursday after Trinity Sunday.

Corpus Christi became a mandatory feast in the Roman Chruch in 1312. But nearly a century earlier, Saint Juliana of Mont Cornilion, promoted a feast to honor the Blessed Sacrament. From early age, Juliana, who became an Augustinian nun in Liege, France, in 1206, had a great veneration for the Blessed Sacrament, and longed for  a special feast in its honor. She had a vision of the Church under the apprearance of a full moon having one dark spot, which signified the absence of such a solemnity. She made known her ideas to the Bishop of Liege, Robert de Thorete, to the Dominican Hugh who later became  cardinal legate in the Netherlands, and to Jacques Panaleon, at the time Archdeacon of Liege and who later became Pope Urban IV. Bishop Robert de Thorete ordered that the feast be clebrated in his diocese. 

Pope Urban IV later published the Bull Transiturus (September 8, 1264), in which , after having extolled the love of Our Savior as expressed in the Holy Eucharist, ordered the annual celebration of Corpus Christi on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. More than four decades later, Pope Clement V published a new decree which embodied  Urban IV’s decree and ordered the adoption of the feast at the General Council of Vienna (1311). Pope John XXII , successor of Clement V, urged this observance.

The Corpus Christi Procession

The most important ritual of Corpus Christi is that of the Procession. For this event, the entire village, parish or town assembles in finest dress. The Procession is comprised of clergy, special guilds or groups, and families. Often children in First Communion dress precede the Blessed Sacrament dropping rose or other flower petals to create a carpet for the approaching Eucharist. Altar boys, clergy, prominet citizens  with guild and society banners of silk and others process. The Holy Eucharist is itself transported in a processional Monstrance, carried by a priest or bishop. The Monstrance is further protected  by an embroidered silk canopy held by four posts, borne by parisioners or altar servers. Publicly proclaiming and reaffirming their devotion to the Holy Eucharist, the entire congregation walks around the church and its grounds to the sound of bells and voices singing sacred hymns. The procession then walks and sings its way to the first of the altars. There the Blessed Sacrament rests while the assembled faithful kneel to pray and sing in adoration of theHoly Eucharist. The procession then continous on in the same manner to other altars until finished.