Corpus Christi 2008

Today we celebrate the solemnity of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. This feast began in the 1200s as a result of two miracles, two interventions of the Lord. The first occurred in the early part of the century, when the Lord Jesus began to appear to a contemplative nun in Belgium, Blessed Juliana of Mont Cornillon (1193-1258). Beginning from the time she was 16, a moon would appear to her throughout the day with a black band in it. She wondered what it meant and the Lord Jesus appeared to her in a dream and mentioned that the moon referred to the liturgical year and the black band to the fact that the liturgical year lacked one thing, a day in honour of His Body and Blood in the Eucharist.
Up until that point, the Church had marked the institution of the Eucharist each year on Holy Thursday, when the Lord gave the apostles his body and blood for the first time and instituted the priesthood. But on Holy Thursday, the focus of most Christians is on the imminent betrayal that will occur after the Last Supper. Even the Gospel of the Mass of the Last Supper does not focus on the Eucharist, but rather on the Lord’s washing his apostles’ feet and commissioning them to do the same in loving, humble service of others. Missing from the liturgical calendar was a feast specifically dedicated to rejoicing in the incredible gift of the Eucharist and thanking God for it. Blessed Juliana went to the local bishop, Bishop Robert of Liège, and asked him to institute a feast in their diocese in Belgium, which he did beginning in 1246. The second intervention happened in the life of a Czech priest, Father Peter of Prague, who had lost his faith in the reality of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist. He used to ask how can this mere bread and wine in my hands can change, after a few sacred words, into the body and blood of the God-man, Jesus, even though all the appearances of the bread and wine remain. Father Peter felt like a hypocrite celebrating the Eucharist while having some doubts about whether the Lord Jesus were truly there. In 1263, he decided to make a pilgrimage to Rome, to pray at the tomb of his patron, St. Peter, for the gift of a renewed faith in the Eucharist. To make a pilgrimage from Prague to Rome in 1263, however, would have meant WALKING 851 miles. Walking twenty miles a day, it would have taken a month-and-a-half, one way. Despite the hardship and sacrifice, however, Peter went out of desperation to save his priesthood and save his faith.
He finally arrived after a long and lengthy journey. He prayed for a few of weeks in front of the tomb of his patron, St. Peter but after all of that, it seemed as if nothing had happened. So, crestfallen, he began on his journey up north, now with very little faith at all. He was travelling in a group of returning pilgrims, because there was safety in numbers in warding off bandits who would wait in hiding to ambush individual travellers. When it came to be Sunday, members of the group asked Fr. Peter if he might celebrate Mass for them. More out of courtesy than faith, he said “yes!”. They stopped at a small Church dedicated to St. Christina in Bolsena, Italy, and celebrated Mass on a side altar. Right before the “Lamb of God,” when Father Peter broke the host, as a priest always does to put a particle into the chalice, the host in his hands began to bleed profusely. It bled over his hands. It bled on the corporal and on the altar cloths. It started to pour down the altar onto the steps. The people, beholding the miracle in front of their eyes, started to shriek. The priest of St. Christina’s came to see what all the commotion was about and beheld the miracle with his own eyes. They had to decide what to do with the miracle. The local priest knew that Pope Urban IV was at that time in Orvieto, a papal city only about 10 miles up hill from where they were, and they decided to take the miracle to Orvieto to see what the Pope would instruct them to do. When they arrived, Father Peter told his story, about how he had lost his faith in the Eucharist, made a pilgrimage to Rome, thought that the Lord hadn’t heard his prayer, but then made his real presence incontrovertibly present during the celebration of the Mass in Bolsena. Father Peter punctuated the truth of the Lord’s presence in the Eucharist by saying, “Holy Father, bread can’t bleed.” That particular Holy Father, Urban IV, was the former archdeacon of bishop of Liège, Robert, and he took that miracle as a sign that Christ wanted a feast to His Body and Blood celebrated not just in his home diocese in Belgium, but throughout the whole Church. The first one was celebrated in 1264 and it has been celebrated ever since. The Lord worked both of those miracles so that we might fittingly celebrate his body and blood today, right here, in this Church!
What should our reaction be to so great a feast, to so mind-blowing a reality? Every time we celebrate Mass, what occurred in Bolsena — and in so many other Eucharistic miracles across the centuries — can occur here. Regardless of whether he chooses to do so or not, the reality is the same: we receive the same Christ who bled on the Cross, who bled in Father Peter’s hands 744 years ago. And our reaction to the Eucharist should be the same, whether a dramatic manifestation occurs or not, because it is Christ, God, whom we receive. Knowledge of that reality should influence our actions with respect to the God-man in the Eucharist.
((Excerpts from Fr. Roger J. Landry’s brilliantly written Homily on the Feast of Corpus Christi. ) )