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A Reflection for the Feast of Corpus Christi 11 June 2020 Father Paul

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A Reflection for the Feast of Corpus Christi 11 June 2020 Father Paul A Reflection for the Feast of Corpus Christi 11 June 2020 Father Paul Smith The Feast of Corpus Christi (Body of Christ) falls on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday which we celebrate today. While the Church of England refers to it also as the Thanksgiving for the Institution of the Holy Communion, in the Catholic tradition of our church it has greater weight than that; if I can put it in those terms. Indeed, at St Michael’s, it is a significant day, when as we celebrate the Eucharist we make our devotion to the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. The truth that Jesus is particularly and mysteriously present in the Sacrament is something that we gather both to remember and rejoice in. In the great ‘I am’ sayings of John’s gospel, Jesus says: ‘I am the bread of life’. (John 6.35). Moreover, in the gospel set for today Jesus says: ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’. (John 6.51). Herein lay our Eucharistic understanding both to receive Holy Communion, and to adore the presence of Jesus in the Sacrament of the Altar. On this Feast Day there is normally a procession of the Blessed Sacrament around the church. Indeed these processions have gone on in the Roman Catholic Church for centuries, the Feast having been instituted in the year 1246. Processions have not been confined to inside the building, they have gone on in towns and villages throughout our own nation. Indeed, I remember, in my early years in the parish, of having the privilege of celebrating the Eucharist for Corpus Christi in the Chapel of the School of St Helen and St Katharine in our parish. We concluded the Eucharistic liturgy with our usual procession, but in the grounds of the school and it was interesting to see the faces of passers by: both girls and adults at the school! At the end of the procession follows Benediction (meaning blessing) given by the priest at the end of the liturgy. The Sacred Host, having been placed in a large, ornate monstrance (a large receptacle specifically for the consecrated host) is used to make the sign of blessing over the people: the blessing of Jesus himself. This year’s Feast of Corpus Christi is particularly poignant since we cannot celebrate the Eucharist in church. Not being able to celebrate the Eucharist or receive Holy Communion has been a particularly profound and painful deprivation of the Covid-19 pandemic and Lockdown. This is something to which Bishop Olivia of Reading made reference to in the Diocesan Eucharist at which she presided on the Third Sunday of Easter. May God give us grace on this Corpus Christi 2020 to ‘reverence of the sacred mysteries of his body and blood’ (from today’s Collect) and know more deeply the spiritual privilege of receiving Holy Communion, perhaps like never before. .
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