Feast of Corpus Christi
The Feast of Corpus Christi (Latin for ‘Body of Christ’) is a Catholic liturgical solemnity celebrating the real presence of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in the elements of the Eucharist — known as transubstantiation. Two months earlier, the Eucharist is observed on Maundy Thursday in a sombre atmosphere leading to Good Friday. The liturgy on that day also commemorates Christ’s washing of the disciples’ feet, the institution of the priesthood and the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. The feast of Corpus Christi was established to create a feast focused solely on the Holy Eucharist, emphasizing the joy of the Eucharist being the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
The feast is liturgically celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday or, “where the Solemnity of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ is not a holy day of obligation, it is assigned to the Sunday after the Most Holy Trinity as its proper day”. In the liturgical reforms of 1969, under Pope Paul VI, the bishops of each nation have the option to transfer it to the following Sunday.
At the end of Holy Mass, there is often a procession of the Blessed Sacrament, generally displayed in a monstrance. The procession is followed by Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. A notable Eucharistic procession is that presided over by the Pope each year in Rome, where it begins at the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran and passes to the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, where it concludes with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.
The celebration of the feast was suppressed in Protestant churches during the Reformation, because they do not hold to the teachings of transubstantiation. Depending on the denomination, Protestant churches instead believe in differing views concerning the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or that Christ is symbolically or metaphorically part of the eucharist. Today, most Protestant denominations do not recognize the feast. The Church of England abolished it in 1548 as the English Reformation progressed, but later reintroduced it.
Gen 14:18-20
1 Cor 11:23-26
Lk 9:11-17
“Give them something to eat yourselves.”
Today’s solemnity is also called Corpus Christi – Latin for Body of Christ – and it celebrates and honours in a special way the real presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist and the Blessed Sacrament: His body, blood, soul and divinity.
One of the many highlights of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi is the procession that precedes Mass, when, under a usually red and gold-fringed canopy, and surrounded by an entourage of priests, altar servers, Extraordinary Communion Ministers and ministry flag bearers, Jesus is both seen – as the consecrated host in the monstrance – and felt: His Spirit of love and mercy flooding the hearts of the faithful who literally get to ‘walk with Jesus’ as part of the solemn procession.
I have always imagined what a show of faith it would be on our part, if we were able to bring our parish’s Corpus Christi procession beyond the church grounds and into our sleepy neighbourhood. Wouldn’t such an event spark questions from our non-Christian neighbours and wouldn’t that be a great opportunity for us to evangelise?
Indeed, bringing Jesus in the sacred host out to the streets of Serangoon Gardens Estate, to hymns of worship and adoration, would no doubt be a grand spectacle and a talking point for weeks on end.
In a similar way, when we show deep reverence in genuflecting in front of the tabernacle, or when we prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament at Adoration, we are also showing the world who is King, who we worship and adore. In recent years, I have seen more Catholics receiving Holy Communion on their knees and on the tongue, more postures of the deepest respect for Christ, and rightly so.
All these outward actions demonstrate our most profound veneration for our Lord, God and Saviour, and if I could get on and off my knees in a flash without causing a commotion at the Communion queue, I would be the first to adopt such a posture of reverence when receiving Jesus too. Still, I am grateful that I can at least genuflect and prostrate before our Majesty.
While these protocols of reverence are necessary, what’s more important are the intentions in our hearts and minds after we see Christ face-to-face, when we consume Him and are one with Him. What do we do with His real presence in and around us?
Do we selfishly keep the graces that flow out of Him into our very being to ourselves, and risk spiritual indigestion and Pharisaic bloatedness? Or are we prepared to go forth and share the Lord’s blessings with others, serving our neighbours by feeding them with His love and mercy; showing His face and heart to the least, the last and the lost, including those who do not love us and whom we find hard to love?
When we are able to see Jesus in the temporally and spiritually bereft, because He is in the very least of our brethren, the dynamics truly change. We would then find it in ourselves to go on our hands and knees to serve anyone and everyone. The marginalised become significant, the loathsome become lovely, the stranger becomes our sister. We would then be able to, as Jesus asks, “Give them something to eat [our]selves.” Like the Apostles and the crowd of more than 5,000 people in the Gospel who gathered overnight to hear Jesus preach, we need only bring our five loaves and two fish, and He will multiply the graces in us and enable us to love whomever He calls us to; because then as now, it is He who works the miracles, for we are but His instruments. All He asks for is our ‘yes’.
The Eucharist is our source of His love, mercy, healing, peace, comfort, strength, hope, joy, wisdom, truth and protection. If we do not become Who we eat, all our actions of reverence, all that falling down on our faces when Jesus passes by, becomes an empty show and mere shallow posturing.
Do our actions speak what is in our hearts? Or are they just much louder than the lukewarm, watered-down ‘love’ we profess to have for Jesus and our neighbours, discordant movements distracting us from what’s at the centre of all His teachings – to love another as He loves us?
(Today’s OXYGEN by Susanah Cheok)
Prayer: My Lord and my God, I ask that you nourish me with Your Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, so that I may always have fullness of life in me. As I consume You in the Eucharist, form and transform me, so that I may be life-giving, peace-giving, Your healing hands and Your feet that bring joy, food for the soul for others. I ask all this in Your precious name, Amen.
Thanksgiving: Meek and humble Jesus, content to be a simple wafer, so that You could feed us every day of our lives, I thank You for being present to me in the Blessed Sacrament, and putting the desire in me to respond to Your invitation to bask in Your divine glory and to be loved by You. I claim Your love and mercy that, in turn, allow me to bring love and mercy to those You place in my life. Amen.
OXYGEN 
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