THE SOLEMNITY OF CORPUS CHRISTI JUNE 11, 2023

Corpus Christi Procession - June 11

Following the 12:30 pm Mass, we will do a neighborhood walk.

Please join us in this wonderful and important profession of faith

Instinctively, our ancestors, guided by the Holy Spirit, wished to give thanks to God for the gift of the Blessed Eucharist at a festival in addition to Holy Thursday.

     Pope Urban IV instituted the Solemnity of Corpus Christi (The Body of Christ) in the 13th century and asked the great Dominican theologian St. Thomas Aquinas to compose a Mass and Office for the new feast. This is the origin of today’s beautiful Mass. The Church celebrates this feast of thanksgiving and joyful adoration of Our Lord truly present in Holy Communion as the food for our souls, and the living Saviour who has pitched his tabernacle (tent) in our midst. There is no better summary of Christian faith in the Blessed Sacrament than the magnificent Sequence sung before the Gospel.

     When we celebrated the Institution of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ on Holy Thursday, we were already entering into the mystery of Christ’s saving Passion, Death and Resurrection. We heard Our Lord’s commandment of love at the Last Supper, the institution of the Apostles as priests of the new and everlasting Covenant (or Testament), and the betrayal of the Lord by Judas Iscariot. In the Mass of Holy Thursday, we celebrated the birthday of the Mass and the gift of the Blessed Sacrament in the beautiful procession to the Altar of Repose. Yet all was coloured by the realisation that this took place on the eve of Our Lord's death. 

     Now we celebrate in unreserved joy and thanksgiving.                                                                             

~ Fr. Paul Dobson