Dear Parishioners:
On Holy Thursday, we celebrate with great devotion and solemnity the day our Lord instituted the Sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and Sacred Priesthood. However, it is also a day we recall the sad and sorrowful memories of the betrayal of Judas, Christ's agony and arrest, Peter's denial.
So the Church in Her wisdom has given us today's great Feast of Corpus Christi, the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ. It, too, is a day to be celebrated with great solemnity and devotion but also much joy. We are joyfully rejoicing in so a great a gift as the Eucharist, the very source and summit of our Catholic Faith.
In the 13th Century, it was a humble nun in Belgium, Saint Juliana, who first suggested and advocated a special feast in honor of the Blessed Sacrament on a day other than Holy Thursday. From her sixteenth year, often in her prayers, she beheld a strange sight: it was as if the full moon appeared to her in brilliant light, while a part of its disc remained black and lightless. Finally, in a vision, Christ showed her the meaning of this picture. The moon represented the Church year; the black spot indicated the lack of a festival in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. She was to announce to the authorities of the Church that God wished to establish such a feast.
In 1230 Juliana communicated her secret to a small group of learned theologians. As her message became publicly known, she suffered scorn and ridicule for some years. But the Bishop of Liége, Belgium, and some of his canons eventually lent a willing ear to her appeals. A diocesan synod in 1246 decided in her favor and prescribed such a feast for the churches of Liége.
One of the men who had supported her efforts in Belgium later became pope. He was Jacques Pantaléon, Archdeacon of Liége. Upon his election to the papal office, he assumed the name of Pope Urban IV (1261-1265). On September 8, 1264, six years after Juliana's death, he established for the whole Church that festival in honor of the Holy Eucharist, which the saintly nun had proclaimed to be willed by God. Today we continue to celebrate and acknowledge the Church doctrine that Jesus is truly present under the appearance of bread and wine in the Eucharist. The theological name for this is "transubstantiation."
The Catechism explains: "By the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood."
The First Mass in the Vernacular, March 7, 1965 celebrated by Saint Pope Paul VI
St. Pope Paul VI reinforced this teaching and forcefully rejected the idea that the Eucharist is a mere symbol. He wrote about it in his encyclical, Mysterium Fidei:
"For the constant teaching that the Catholic Church has passed on to her catechumens, the understanding of the Christian people, the doctrine defined by the Council of Trent, the very words that Christ used when He instituted the Most Holy Eucharist, all require us to profess that 'the Eucharist is the flesh of Our Savior Jesus Christ which suffered for our sins and which the Father in His loving kindness raised again.'"
The most significant support of this essential belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is the witness of the Twelve Apostles. This evidence is that eleven of the apostles died as martyrs, and the twelfth died in prison. Is there anyone who believes they would have undergone torture, prison, and even horrible deaths for a mere symbolic Eucharist and not the real presence of Christ? Would we? As the Catholic Author, Flannery O’Connor once famously said: “Well, if (the Eucharist) is just a symbol, then to the hell with it!”
St. Augustine teaches us clearly that: "What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ and the chalice is the blood of Christ!"
So this Corpus Christ celebrate the Eucharist, with a renewed faith, love, devotion, and joy. We offer prayerful congratulations to our new priests, Fr. Dan Mahoney and Fr Doan Nguyen. Be well. Stay safe. Do good. God Bless.
Corpus Christi Procession. Carl Emil Doepler.(1824–1905)