The Feast of Corpus Christi
This year Corpus Christi is celebrated on Thursday 19 June. Unlike so many other feast days in the Church it does not commemorate a particular event in Jesus’ life. Instead it celebrates the Body and Blood of Christ really present in the Eucharist. As a veneration of the Blessed Sacrament, it is solely focused on the Holy Eucharist.
Its institution can be traced back to the 13th century and the efforts of Bishop Robert de Thorete of the Belgina diocese of Liège, and St. Juliana of Mont Cornillon, but it celebrates something far older: the institution of the Sacrament of Holy Communion at the Last Supper. At the request of Pope Urban IV, St. Thomas Aquinas composed the official prayers of the Church for the feast. These prayers are widely considered to be some of the most beautiful in the traditional Roman prayer book of the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours.
For centuries after the celebration was extended to the universal Church, the feast was also celebrated with a Eucharistic procession, in which the Sacred Host was carried throughout the town, accompanied by hymns and litanies. The faithful would venerate the Body of Christ as the procession passed by. In recent years, this practice has almost disappeared.
It is commonly accepted that the institution of the Holy Sacrament originated during the Last Supper. During the Jewish religious feast of Passover, the events surrounding Moses and the Exodus from Egypt are remembered as a way of invoking God, and later thanking God, for liberation from captivity in Babylon. Jesus can be credited with spiritualizing the meaning of liberation, renewing the Divine Covenant or henosis (oneness, union) between God and humanity, and instituting the Sacrament of Discipleship as an imitatio Christi such that the disciples eat and drink the mystic Body and Blood of Christ. Exactly what “Body and Blood of Christ” means is somewhat debatable. Among Jewish Christians it had been the epiousion (transcendent manna) bread and wine of the Messianic Kingdom, perhaps associated with the sacred shewbread of the Temple. In the Christian churches it had definite parallels to similar sacred meals overseen by priests and hierophants of the Hellenistic mystery religions. In both cases however, it was magical as well as supernatural, and its consecration created a physical and palpable divine substance that could be ingested to facilitate divine communion and eventual apotheosis (elevation to divine level). Jesus may have used the Aramaic words: “This is my Body; which is your Body,” thus the bread represented discipleship and the imitation of Christ, and wine represented the covenantal vows and blessings. In Communion the Blessings of
Heaven are transmitted at a sacred time and place and become a vessel for Divine Transformation through the illumination of Higher Energies pouring into the world of mankind (Assiah). The acts of consecration become a divine process of Invocation and Evocation wherein initiates and servers not only receive, but send forth and transmit to the world in service. The Presence of the Christ is realized and made manifest, and in the process the reality of the Inner Christ is brought forth and evoked.
By partaking in these sacred acts, initiates participate in the unseen work and service of Heaven as co-creators, learning to “manifest” spiritual reality into the lower world of matter through causal means.
They contact their Higher Selves, bringing forth by Higher Impression spiritual teaching and guidance, and in doing so truly becomes a priesthood of all the faithful. They are instrumental in unifying all living beings, helping to bring into reality the universal Spiritual Assembly of All Humanity. May we all strive to stand before the Throne of God and, like Jesus become priests forever after the Order of Melchizedek.
Hence so great a Sacrament
Let us venerate with heads bowed
And let the old practice
Give way to the new rite;
Let faith provide a supplement
For the failure of the senses.
To the Begetter and the Begotten,
Be praise and jubilation,
Hail, honour, virtue also,
And blessing too:
To the One proceeding from Both
Let there be equal praise.
Amen.