Thursday, June 07, 2007

Corpus Christi, today or Sunday?

I was reading the DIVINE INTIMACY meditation on Corpus Christi this morning, and will post from it. Yet, on the US Calendar, the solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) is listed as Sunday, June 10. I see at Overheard in the Sacristy that the Mass of Corpus Christi, presided over by Pope Benedict XVI, will be broadcast today on EWTN. I will assume that means that the solemnity has been moved in the US ostensibly for the convenience of us pre-judged as lazy folks who don’t want to be troubled by a week-day religious observance, rather than the calendar of the universal Church? Eh?

From DIVINE INTIMACY, by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.

#200 FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI
Thursday after the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity

-The eternal tide flows hid in living bread.
That with its heavenly life too be fed
… (St. John of the Cross, Poems).

The solemnity of the Corpus Christi is not just the simple memorial of an historical event which took place almost tow thousand years ago at the Last Supper; rather, it recalls us to the ever-present reality of Jesus always living in our midst. We can say, in truth that He has not “left us orphans,” but has willed to remain permanently with us, in the integrity of His Person in the fullness of His humanity and His divinity. “There is no other nation so great,” the Divine Office enthusiastically sings, “as to have its gods so near as our God is present to us.” In the Eucharist, Jesus is really Emmanuel, God with us.


O inextinguishable love! O love of Christ! O love of the human race! What a true furnace of love! O Jesus, You already saw the death which awaited You; the sorrows and atrocious tortures of the Passion were already breaking Your Heart, and yet You offered Yourself to Your executioners, and permitted them, by means of this Sacrament, to possess You forever as an eternal gift, O You, whose delights are to be with the children of men.

O my soul, how can you refrain from plunging yourself ever deeper and deeper into the love of Christ, who did not forget you in life or in death, but who willed to give Himself wholly to you, and to unite you to Himself forever?”
(St. Angela of Foligno).


Anita, thanks for the link!

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