A Meditation for the Feast of Corpus Christi
O sacrum convivium! In quo Christus sumitur, recolitur memoria passionis ejus, mens impletur gratia, et future gloriae nobis pignus datur.[1
O sacred banquet! In which Christ is received, the memorial of his passion is renewed, the mind is filled with grace and a pledge of future glory is given.
These words, set as a beautiful anthem by Thomas Tallis, among so many others, serve to bind together all the elements of the mystery of the Blessed Eucharist highlighted by this feast. They draw one back to the sixth chapter of St John’s Gospel where Jesus insists that he is “the living bread come down from heaven” and that whoever eats of “this bread” will have eternal life. This is no ordinary bread for he gives his corpus, “body”, his flesh.
The gospel records that he announced this challenging doctrine when teaching in the synagogue at Capharnaum and that his followers were so taken aback that most left him. It seems only the twelve and a few others remained. Jesus explained that “the words I have been speaking to you are spirit, and life”. He made clear that the mystery of the Blessed Eucharist must be approached by faith, not by human reasoning. Christ is received, taken: “sumitur”. “Truly I tell you this; you can have no life in yourselves, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood.”[2]
These two elements, flesh and blood stress the fact that the whole living Christ is received in the partaking of the Eucharist. Moreover, as the antiphon emphasizes, by receiving Christ each communicant is inserted into his passion, and thereby entirely into his divine life, aligning the individual with all that was there accomplished, while at the same experiencing what is described as the “glimpse” of heaven.
The guarantee (pignus) of heaven is an aspect of Holy Communion that is undervalued at the present time. An over-emphasis on active participation has high-lighted the externals, often leading to excesses and aberrations and has minimized or even obliterated the transcendental, the interior participation. The spiritual dimension is particularly evident in the preparatory prayer for Holy Communion. The priest places a fragment of the host into the chalice to signify the union of “flesh and blood” and prays silently that “this mingling, and the consecration of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ” may make us admissible into eternal life.
Everyone can make this prayer, for when we pray the Mass and enter into its mystery, we pray with and through the priest. He intercedes on our behalf so our prayer is joined inwardly and silently with his, for he has assumed the priestly role of “in persona Christi”. The prayer after the priest’s reception of the sacrament confirms “the pledge of future glory” for through the reception of the Body and Blood, one’s innermost being is “re-made” (refecerunt) by the “pure and holy sacrament”.[3] Even now, we have “seen his glory” for the “Word made flesh” has made his abode (habitavit) in us.[4]
Just as the priest intercedes on our behalf in the sacred action of the Eucharist, there are others who act on our behalf as well. When the choir sings, it becomes my voice because it exercises a munus ministeriale,[5] a ministerial function. Choristers are not concert givers or competitors – theirs is the work and duty of adoration, for it lifts me from the ordinariness of the secular and brings me to the level of transcendence: doing for me what I am not able to do well or at all myself. Their excellence becomes my excellence. This means of course that such a sacred function is only possible through conviction. It presupposes faith and adoration so it can carry one to a deeper perception of the Mysterium Fidei. This is especially true in religious communities where the weaker are “carried aloft” by the more competent.
The Feast of Corpus Christi brings to life the need to live the mystery of the Eucharist and enhance our lives by the beauty of all that it enshrines.[6] Its dignity, sublimity and mystery are best expressed in the time-honoured hymn of St Thomas Aquinas. The best translation is by Gerard Manley Hopkins because it captures the immediacy of the real presence of Christ, especially in construing correctly “latens” as the present participle: “hiding” rather than “hidden”. Christ is here now!
Adoro Te devote, latens Deitas que sub his figuris vere latitas….
I adore you devoutly, hiding God, who under these forms is truly hidden.
The entire hymn is peppered with the different forms of the “hiddenness” of the Divinity. The third stanza contrasts the hiddenness of the divinity when Christ was dying on the cross with the hiddenness of his humanity in the Sacrament of the Eucharist:
In cruce latebat sola Deitas, at hic latet simul et humanitas; Ambo tamen credens atque confitens, Peto quod petivit latro paenitens.
“On the cross only the divinity was hidden, but here the humanity is likewise hidden; nevertheless, believing and confessing both, I request that for which the repenting thief asked.”
The prayer of the final stanza uncovers the hiddenness through liberation from this earthly existence to dwell in the beatific vision where Christ, now unveiled, is to be seen in all his glory, eternally:
Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio, Oro fiat illud quod tam sitio; Ut te revelata cernens facie, Visu sim beatus tuae gloriae. Amen.
“Jesu, whom I now see hidden, I pray that what I thirst for so much may be done; that seeing you revealed face to face, I may be blessèd by the sight of your glory. Amen.”
Adoremus in aeternum sanctissimum sacramentum:
May we adore for ever this most holy sacrament!
PMW
[1] Antiphon at the Magnificat for the Vespers of Corpus Christi, attributed to St Thomas Aquinas.
[2] Jn 6: 53.
[3] Corpus tuum, Domine, quod sumpsi, et Sanguis, quem potavi, adhaereat visceribus meis: et praesta; ut in me non remaneat scelerum macula, quem pura et sancta refecerunt sacramenta. May your Body, Lord, which I have received, and Blood, that I have consumed, adhere to my innermost being, and grant that no blemish of evil may remain in me, whom this pure and holy sacrament has remade. (Sadly, this lovely prayer has been jettisoned in the novus ordo.)
[4] John 1:14.
[5] Sacrosanctum Concilium VI: 112.
[6] “Beauty is the path that carries affective man towards the spirit.” – Thomas Mann.
O sacred banquet! In which Christ is received, the memorial of his passion is renewed, the mind is filled with grace and a pledge of future glory is given.
These words, set as a beautiful anthem by Thomas Tallis, among so many others, serve to bind together all the elements of the mystery of the Blessed Eucharist highlighted by this feast. They draw one back to the sixth chapter of St John’s Gospel where Jesus insists that he is “the living bread come down from heaven” and that whoever eats of “this bread” will have eternal life. This is no ordinary bread for he gives his corpus, “body”, his flesh.
The gospel records that he announced this challenging doctrine when teaching in the synagogue at Capharnaum and that his followers were so taken aback that most left him. It seems only the twelve and a few others remained. Jesus explained that “the words I have been speaking to you are spirit, and life”. He made clear that the mystery of the Blessed Eucharist must be approached by faith, not by human reasoning. Christ is received, taken: “sumitur”. “Truly I tell you this; you can have no life in yourselves, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood.”[2]
These two elements, flesh and blood stress the fact that the whole living Christ is received in the partaking of the Eucharist. Moreover, as the antiphon emphasizes, by receiving Christ each communicant is inserted into his passion, and thereby entirely into his divine life, aligning the individual with all that was there accomplished, while at the same experiencing what is described as the “glimpse” of heaven.
The guarantee (pignus) of heaven is an aspect of Holy Communion that is undervalued at the present time. An over-emphasis on active participation has high-lighted the externals, often leading to excesses and aberrations and has minimized or even obliterated the transcendental, the interior participation. The spiritual dimension is particularly evident in the preparatory prayer for Holy Communion. The priest places a fragment of the host into the chalice to signify the union of “flesh and blood” and prays silently that “this mingling, and the consecration of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ” may make us admissible into eternal life.
Everyone can make this prayer, for when we pray the Mass and enter into its mystery, we pray with and through the priest. He intercedes on our behalf so our prayer is joined inwardly and silently with his, for he has assumed the priestly role of “in persona Christi”. The prayer after the priest’s reception of the sacrament confirms “the pledge of future glory” for through the reception of the Body and Blood, one’s innermost being is “re-made” (refecerunt) by the “pure and holy sacrament”.[3] Even now, we have “seen his glory” for the “Word made flesh” has made his abode (habitavit) in us.[4]
Just as the priest intercedes on our behalf in the sacred action of the Eucharist, there are others who act on our behalf as well. When the choir sings, it becomes my voice because it exercises a munus ministeriale,[5] a ministerial function. Choristers are not concert givers or competitors – theirs is the work and duty of adoration, for it lifts me from the ordinariness of the secular and brings me to the level of transcendence: doing for me what I am not able to do well or at all myself. Their excellence becomes my excellence. This means of course that such a sacred function is only possible through conviction. It presupposes faith and adoration so it can carry one to a deeper perception of the Mysterium Fidei. This is especially true in religious communities where the weaker are “carried aloft” by the more competent.
The Feast of Corpus Christi brings to life the need to live the mystery of the Eucharist and enhance our lives by the beauty of all that it enshrines.[6] Its dignity, sublimity and mystery are best expressed in the time-honoured hymn of St Thomas Aquinas. The best translation is by Gerard Manley Hopkins because it captures the immediacy of the real presence of Christ, especially in construing correctly “latens” as the present participle: “hiding” rather than “hidden”. Christ is here now!
Adoro Te devote, latens Deitas que sub his figuris vere latitas….
I adore you devoutly, hiding God, who under these forms is truly hidden.
The entire hymn is peppered with the different forms of the “hiddenness” of the Divinity. The third stanza contrasts the hiddenness of the divinity when Christ was dying on the cross with the hiddenness of his humanity in the Sacrament of the Eucharist:
In cruce latebat sola Deitas, at hic latet simul et humanitas; Ambo tamen credens atque confitens, Peto quod petivit latro paenitens.
“On the cross only the divinity was hidden, but here the humanity is likewise hidden; nevertheless, believing and confessing both, I request that for which the repenting thief asked.”
The prayer of the final stanza uncovers the hiddenness through liberation from this earthly existence to dwell in the beatific vision where Christ, now unveiled, is to be seen in all his glory, eternally:
Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio, Oro fiat illud quod tam sitio; Ut te revelata cernens facie, Visu sim beatus tuae gloriae. Amen.
“Jesu, whom I now see hidden, I pray that what I thirst for so much may be done; that seeing you revealed face to face, I may be blessèd by the sight of your glory. Amen.”
Adoremus in aeternum sanctissimum sacramentum:
May we adore for ever this most holy sacrament!
PMW
[1] Antiphon at the Magnificat for the Vespers of Corpus Christi, attributed to St Thomas Aquinas.
[2] Jn 6: 53.
[3] Corpus tuum, Domine, quod sumpsi, et Sanguis, quem potavi, adhaereat visceribus meis: et praesta; ut in me non remaneat scelerum macula, quem pura et sancta refecerunt sacramenta. May your Body, Lord, which I have received, and Blood, that I have consumed, adhere to my innermost being, and grant that no blemish of evil may remain in me, whom this pure and holy sacrament has remade. (Sadly, this lovely prayer has been jettisoned in the novus ordo.)
[4] John 1:14.
[5] Sacrosanctum Concilium VI: 112.
[6] “Beauty is the path that carries affective man towards the spirit.” – Thomas Mann.