A Sunday Thought About the Feast of Corpus Christi
Most of us celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi on this Sunday. Some of us - those who observe the calendar of the "Extraordinary Form" of the Roman liturgy celebrated it this past Thursday, the traditional day of observance. Either way, we honor in a special way the Body of Christ.
We recently returned from a week's vacation and couldn't get to daily Mass at all. When I get to daily Mass, I usually receive Holy Communion. Even though our vacation was wonderful (and most definitely needed!) I missed receiving the Body of Christ during the week.
Rather than express my own weak, inadequate thoughts about the mysterious wonder of Christ present to us Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in Holy Communion, I direct you to St Thomas Aquinas. He composed the liturgy for Corpus in the 13th century, when Pope Urban IV first declared the Feast of Corpus Christi. In addition to the Sequence of the Corpus Christi Mass, he composed a special hymn for vespers on Corpus Christi. (You can read more about this HERE.) We Catholics used to know this hymn. We could even sing it in Latin, the original language of its composition.
But we won't lament the loss of Latin in the typical celebration of our Novus Ordo liturgy today. Instead, let's listen to the Pange Linqua as it was once commonly chanted throughout the Catholic world and - by the grace of God - still is in some places. In this particular video, the great chant is accompanied by images of a Corpus Christi procession, where the Body of Christ was publicly honored - once a common occurrence on the Feast of Corpus Christi, now a rare one. It reminds us of what once was, what still is, and what may - by the grace of God - once again become a common practice among Catholics.
We recently returned from a week's vacation and couldn't get to daily Mass at all. When I get to daily Mass, I usually receive Holy Communion. Even though our vacation was wonderful (and most definitely needed!) I missed receiving the Body of Christ during the week.
Rather than express my own weak, inadequate thoughts about the mysterious wonder of Christ present to us Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in Holy Communion, I direct you to St Thomas Aquinas. He composed the liturgy for Corpus in the 13th century, when Pope Urban IV first declared the Feast of Corpus Christi. In addition to the Sequence of the Corpus Christi Mass, he composed a special hymn for vespers on Corpus Christi. (You can read more about this HERE.) We Catholics used to know this hymn. We could even sing it in Latin, the original language of its composition.
But we won't lament the loss of Latin in the typical celebration of our Novus Ordo liturgy today. Instead, let's listen to the Pange Linqua as it was once commonly chanted throughout the Catholic world and - by the grace of God - still is in some places. In this particular video, the great chant is accompanied by images of a Corpus Christi procession, where the Body of Christ was publicly honored - once a common occurrence on the Feast of Corpus Christi, now a rare one. It reminds us of what once was, what still is, and what may - by the grace of God - once again become a common practice among Catholics.
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