Corpus Christi -- God with Us

CORPUS CHRISTI LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY

It was the summer of 1950. Our family had saved all during the years of World War II for a trip to Germany so that we could see the homes of our parents. The sea voyage on the converted troop ship, the SS Washington took about a week before it landed in la Havre, France. The train took us to Paris where we rested until the night train that took us to the German home of our mother, Fautenbach near Achern in Baden. We arrived very early in the morning and there was the long awaited greeting of a Grandmother, Aunts and Uncles and cousins.

We were also in time for the Mass and procession of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. From the village church we made our way with the Blessed Sacrament, the priest and altar boys down the road of the village and out into the fields behind my Grandmother’s house. There were prayers and hymns while the priest blessed the fields and the June crops with holy water, asking God to bring a simple prosperity after the long war years of suffering, hardship and terror.

Germany was a defeated and disgraced country humiliated in the eyes of the world. These simple people were dressed in the shabby old fashioned clothes that still served as “Sunday best” even though they barely survived, as did those who wore them, the years of privation.

In the cities there were very visible scars of the bombings. The Cathedral of Munich that we visited later was blackened and the gaping hole left by the entirely collapsed roof was covered by fresh planks. Here, however, the fields were fresh with new growth, with wild flowers and garden blooms. The sun was warm and birds sang. The faith had endured and now formed the strong and sure trunk onto which the future could grow. The Body of Christ, Jesus in the Eucharist was not defeated and not ashamed to be with these people. The body that suffered and died on the cross understood their suffering and did not abandon them. The Christian heritage of Europe and the world is the sure strength that will survive all the tyrants, moral ambiguity, cruelty and death that threaten us again in our own time.

Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ

The retreat master priest at the youth retreat asked, "Why do you suppose that Jesus gave us the Holy Eucharist?" The teen aged girl replied, "Because He knew that we would need someone to see and touch throughout the ages." With the security needs that mandate locked churches, one of the most beautiful, joyful and consoling things about being a Catholic is gradually disappearing. St. Thomas Aquinal (c.1225-1274) was asked to write the hymns and prayers for the newly declared Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. Taken from the publication, LIVING WITH CHRIST (see their web site: www.livingwithchrist.us ) comes the beautiful hymn LAUDA SION:

LAUDA SION

Laud, O Zion, your salvation,
Laud with hymns of exultation,
Christ, your king and shepherd true:

Bring him all the praise you know,
He is more than you bestow.
Never can you reach his due.

Special theme for glad thanksgiving
Is the quick’ning and the living
Bread today before you set:

From his hands of old partaken,
As we know, by faith unshaken,
Where the Twelve at supper met.

Full and clear ring out your chanting,
Joy nor sweetest grace be wanting,
From your heart let praises burst:

For today the feast is holden,
When the institution olden
Of that supper was rehearsed.

Here the new law’s new oblation
By the new king’s revelation,
Ends the form of ancient rite:
Now the new the old effaces,
Truth away the shadow chases,
Light dispels the gloom of night.

What he did at supper seated,
Christ ordained to be repeated,
His memorial ne’er to cease:

And his rule for guidance taking,
Bread and wine we hallow,
Making thus our sacrifice of peace.

This the truth each Christian learns,
Bread into his flesh he turns,
To his precious blood the wine:

Sight has fail’d, nor thought conceives,
But a dauntless faith believes,
Resting on a pow’r divine.

Here beneath these signs are hidden
Priceless things to sense forbidden;
Sign, not things are all we see:

Blood is poured and flesh is broken,
Yet in either wondrous token
Christ entire we know to be.

Whoso of this food partakes,
Does not rend the Lord nor breaks;
Christ is whole to all that taste:

Thousands are, as one, receivers,
One, as thousands of believers,
Eats of him who cannot waste.

Bad and good the feast are sharing,
Of what divers dooms preparing,
Endless death or endless life.

Life to these, to those damnation,
See how like participation
Is with unlike issues rife.

When the sacrament is broken,
Doubt not, but believe ‘tis spoken,
That the sever’d outward token
doth the very whole contain.

Nought the precious gift divides,
Breaking but the sign betides
Jesus still the same abides,
still unbroken does remain.

(the following is a shorter form.)

Lo! The angel’s food is given
To the pilgrim who has striven;
See the children’s bread from heaven,
which on dogs may not be spent.

Truth the ancient types fulfilling,
Isaac bound, a victim willing,
Paschal lamb, its lifeblood spilling,
Manna to the fathers sent.

Very bread, good shepherd, tend us
Jesu, of your love befriend us,
You refresh us, you defend us,
Your eternal goodness send us
In the land of life to see.

You who all things can and know,
Who on earth such food besow,
Grant us with your saints, though lowest,
Where the heav’nly feast you show,
Fellow heirs and guests to be.