The festival of Corpus Christi celebrates the Eucharist as the body of Christ. The name 'Corpus Christi' is Latin for 'the body of Christ' and the feast is celebrated by Roman Catholics and other Christians to proclaim the truth of the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the actual body of Christ during Mass.
In some countries in the world, Catholic churches still celebrate the festival, not only with a Mass, but also with a procession that carries the consecrated wafer through the streets as a public statement that the sacrifice of Christ was for the salvation of the whole world.
In the Church of England this feast is liturgically celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday and is known as the Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion (Corpus Christi), which this year is June 3rd. Christians already mark the Last Supper, when Christ instituted the Eucharist, on Maundy Thursday (the day before Good Friday). Because Maundy Thursday falls during the solemn period of Holy Week, it was thought necessary to have a separate festival of the Eucharist that would allow the celebration not to be muted by sadness. The feast was proposed by Saint Thomas Aquinas who was inspired by the religious experience of St Juliana (1193-1258), a Belgian nun. He asked Pope Urban IV to create a feast focused solely on the Holy Eucharist, emphasising the joy of the Eucharist being the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. For Catholics, the host contains the real presence of Christ, and it is displayed on a 'monstrance' and treated as Christ in human form would be treated, with reverence, ceremony and adoration.
 |
| Photo by Maria Oswalt on Unsplash |
The feast of Corpus Christi was suppressed in Protestant churches in the Reformation for theological reasons as Protestants deny the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist other than as a symbolic or spiritual presence. As the English Reformation progressed the Church of England abolished the feast of Corpus Christi in 1548, but later reintroduced it in Anglicised form. Most Anglican churches now observe Corpus Christi, sometimes under the name "Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion".
Corpus Christi is often marked by a service originally devised by Thomas Aquinas. It includes five great hymns, including Panis Angelicus (part of a longer hymn called Sacris Solemniis, 'At this our solemn feast') and Pange lingua ('Sing, my tongue')
