“Corpus Christi”

The Solemnity of Corpus Christi is a feast dedicated to the Eucharist, and emphasizing the Real Presence. It also known as the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. While the feast was established as a devotion to the Eucharist in the thirteenth century, belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist appears not only in scripture, but also early in letters from Church Fathers. St. Ignatius wrote the following in a letter near the end of his life around 117A.D.:

I take no delight in corruptible food or in the dainties of this life. What I want is God's bread, which is the flesh of Christ, who came from David's line; and for drink want his blood: an immortal love feast indeed!"

Between 136 and 165 A.D. Justin Martyr gives us a description of the Eucharist Celebrated by the followers of Jesus:

"And this food is called among us Εὐχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh…”
 

The Feast of Corpus Christi

A Eucharistic miracle took place in Bolsena, Italy, in 1263. In that year a German priest, Peter of Prague, stopped at Bolsena while on a pilgrimage to Rome. He is described as being a pious priest, but one who found it difficult to believe that Christ was actually present in the consecrated host. While celebrating Mass, blood started from the consecrated host to trickle over his hands onto the altar and the corporal.

The priest immediately attempted to hide the blood, but then he interrupted the Mass and asked to be taken to the neighboring city of Orvieto, where Pope Urban IV was then residing. The Pope listened to the priest’s account and sent emissaries to conduct an investigation. When all the facts had been determined, he ordered the

bishop of the diocese to bring the host and the linen cloth with the stains of blood to Orvieto. The Pope met the procession and, amid great pomp, had the relics placed in the cathedral. The linen corporal bearing the spots of blood is still on display in the cathedral of Orvieto.Pope Urban IV  commissioned St Thomas Aquinas to compose the Proper for a Mass and an Office honoring the Holy Eucharist as the Body of Christ. One year after the miracle, in August of 1264, Pope Urban IV instituted the feast of Corpus Christi. St Thomas’ texts are still used today for the Mass and the Divine Office.

In August of 1964, on the 700th anniversary of the institution of the feast of Corpus Christi, Pope Paul VI celebrated Holy Mass at the altar where the holy corporal is kept in its golden shrine in the cathedral of Orvieto. 

The Eucharistic processions have a long history. In 1311 Pope Clement V made Corpus Christi a feast for the universal Church, to be celebrated on the Thursday following the feast of the Blessed Trinity, and he declared that the celebration of the feast was to include a procession with the Blessed Sacrament. There are abundant records of the processions in England, for example, from the fourteenth century on, with the earliest recorded procession taking place in 1318. The Blessed Sacrament was carried beneath a canopy, often with rose petals strewn on the ground as the procession passed. Numerous artworks throughout the Middle Ages depict the Corpus Christi procession.