Archbishop of Sydney

Corpus Christi Procession

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
18/6/2006

Corpus Christi means the Body of Christ.  Many years ago I asked one of the altar servers, about 13 or 14 years of age, what Corpus Christi meant.  He said that he wasn’t sure, but he thought it had something to do with the Christian brothers!  We know better and it is very encouraging to see so many Catholics give witness to their Christian faith by walking in procession through the city.

We Christians know that all history is moving ahead towards the eventual return of Christ as King at the end of time.  All the Old Testament was a development which culminated in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ i.e. the anointed one, who is the long awaited Messiah and the only Son of God.

History continues to move forward towards the end of time, the last Judgement.  This doesn’t imply that the situation is always improving, but we are moving ahead.  It is from this understanding that the secular idea of progress developed, which is basically different from the pagan understanding of everlasting return, of history revolving around itself, like night and day, the return of the seasons and the concept of reincarnation.

Revelation was completed with the coming of Our Lord and the finalization of the New Testament scriptures, but this does not prevent the Christian community from confronting new situations and understanding Christian truths in a deeper and fuller way.  So too devotional practices and ways of praying change with the generations (as we have seen during the last 40 years), sometimes better capturing truths that were hidden or challenged.  Such is the 20th century devotion to the Divine Mercy, which is growing in popularity.

While there is mention of a feast of the chalice in the fifth century Calendar of Polemius, which was celebrated in an already crowded Holy Week, it was only in 13th century Belgium that St. Juliana of Mt. Cornillon began a concerted campaign to increase veneration of the Blessed Sacrament and for the Church to institute a special feast for this purpose.  She had a famous vision of the Church as a full moon with one black spot, which symbolized the absence of such a feast.

She convinced the bishop of Liege, also a prominent Dominican priest who later was Cardinal Legate to the Netherlands and the then Archdeacon of Liege, Jacques Pantaleon, who went on to become Bishop of Verdun, Patriarch of Jerusalem and finally Pope Urban IV.

As pope he issued a papal decree Transiturus in 1264 which instituted Corpus Christi as a feast of the universal Church.

In a moment of inspiration he asked Thomas Aquinas, an Italian Dominican and the greatest theologian of the age to put together a new office or daily prayer for the feast and Thomas composed five magnificent Latin hymns, two of which we use regularly at Benediction, “Adoro te devote” and “Pange Lingua” and the “Landa Sion” sequence for today’s Mass.

Unfortunately Pope Urban died soon afterwards, which slowed things down until Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne in 1311, nearly 50 years later, reissued a decree supporting the feast.

In many parts of the world, especially the Catholic world, Corpus Christi processions are one of our best known public devotions.  At the Protestant Reformation the reformers denied the Real Presence of Jesus in the consecrated species and the processions became a Catholic rallying point. 

There was a reaction among some Catholics against Corpus Christi processions in places like Australia after the Second Vatican council because both the procession and particular liturgies to worship Our Lord, in the consecrated species outside Mass are not found in the New Testament writings.

Certainly the worship of the Blessed Sacrament and the Corpus Christi procession are not alternatives or rivals to the celebration of the Eucharist, when we memorialize the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, Our Redeemer.  Our celebrations come from the sacrifice of the Eucharist, “the source and summit of the Christian life” and tend towards sacramental and spiritual communion.

I began by mentioning the Christian understanding of moving forward and the procession is another example of this, of us as the People of God, journeying with the Lord and proclaiming our faith to the bystanders and the wider community, our faith in Him who has truly become “God-among-us”.

We need this feast today for a couple of reasons, particularly to remind us of the treasure we have in Communion; the Son of God himself.

Repetition tends to dull this understanding, and the frequency of this miracle of transubstantiation can obscure what in fact we are worshipping, the Son of God, present as body, blood, soul and divinity.  Surveys show that today even a goodly percentage of Australian Catholics do not understand that Our Lord is really and truly present in the consecrated bread and wine.  This is a mistake, an important misunderstanding.  We need to come regularly in awe and reverence to worship the Son of God.

Another reason why this feast is important is that society today needs moments of quiet, for adoration, to rest quietly before the presence of the Transcendent to remember the existence of the Holy, of the mighty God who loves us and saves us.

No generation in history has been able to distract itself as we are with transistors, ipods, mobile phone, DVDs, television the internet.  Too much noise is damaging, sets us on edge.

Silent prayer is good for our souls, but it is also good for us psychologically, for our hearts, for peace of mind.  These are the reasons why quiet prayer before the Blessed Sacrament is slowly spreading again, is one of the signs of the times.

So we pray with the last verse of Aquinas’ “Landa Sion”

 Jesus, shepherd mild and meek,
 shield the poor, support the weak;
 help all who thy pardon sue,
 placing all their trust in you:
 fill them with your healing grace!
 Source of all we have or know,
 feed and lead us here below.
 Grant that with your saints above,
 sitting at the feast of love
 we may see you face to face.
 Amen.  Alleluia.