God in the Streets of Tacoma
Depending on what calendar you use (Ordinary Form or Extraordinary Form), and whether or not it is a Holy Day of Obligation in your diocese, today (or last Thursday) is (or was) the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi).
Happy Corpus Christi!
Whereas Holy Thursday is a celebration of the institution of the Eucharist, Corpus Christi is a celebration of the Eucharist itself. And what a gift has God given us!
The feast was instituted to help combat the creeping idea that maybe when Christ said “this is my body”, He didn’t really mean it. Go read the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Saint John – it’s plainly clear that this teaching was not symbolic, not a parable, but the Truth.
It is Christ Himself: body, blood, soul, divinity.
Even when Jesus was there, walking among the disciples, it was a difficult thing to get your head around. People refused to accept it, and they stopped following Christ. It has ever been thus.
This feast is both a doctrinal and [ritual] response to heretical teaching on the mystery of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the apogee of an ardent devotional movement concentrated on the Sacrament of the Altar. It was extended to the entire Latin Church by Urban IV in 1264. …
For centuries, the celebration of Corpus Christi remained the principal point of popular piety’s concentration on the Eucharist. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, faith, in reaction to various forms of Protestantism, and culture (art, folklore and literature) coalesced in developing lively and significant expressions Eucharistic devotion in popular piety.
In centuries past, the feast was the occasion of Eucharistic processions through the streets. While this had fallen out of favour for several decades, I’m happy to see that this great tradition is making a comeback.
In fact, if you find yourself in Tacoma today, please join us at Holy Rosary Church for Mass at Noon, followed by our seventh annual Eucharistic procession through the streets of Tacoma.
We will process from Holy Rosary in Tacoma, across I-5 and back. Following a cross bearer and two thurifers, a priest will carry a monstrance – a golden vessel containing the consecrated bread, carrying God Himself – under a canopy carried by parishioners. Torchbearers flank the canopy, and the choir and the people of the parish follow behind.
(photo by Greg Cook)
When we arrive back at Holy Rosary, Father Bourke will offer Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament at a temporary station in front of the still-closed church building.
Afterwards, we will have our parish picnic and say goodbye to Father Bourke and Sister Hanh our sacristan as they head out for new assignments come July. Come and join us!