Corpus Christi

It took time for the early Christians to grow in their awareness of the real presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist. At the beginning of Christianity they didn’t have tabernacles; they just celebrated the Mass normally in their own homes. They didn’t have churches because of the persecutions. After Mass sometimes they kept the Blessed Sacrament for the sick and the people who couldn’t come. Slowly they began to realise that Jesus was there and they began to keep it in a secure place. Eventually they gave the Lord the best room of the house. They started to acknowledge his presence and keep him company, spending time with him in prayer.

Saint Juliana of Liege, in what is now Belgium, had a great veneration for the Eucharist. When she was 16, she saw a vision of the Church as the moon in its full splendour, crossed diametrically by a dark stripe. She understood that the opaque line represented the absence of a liturgical feast in honour of the Body and Blood of Christ. At that time the only feast about the Eucharist was Holy Thursday, when the institution of the Mass was celebrated. It was wedged into Holy Week. The Bishop of her diocese was the first one to celebrate Corpus Christi in his diocese. Then a priest of that diocese became a Pope and he instituted the feast for the whole Church. It is good to have a friend who becomes Pope. Urban IV asked Saint Bonaventure and Saint Thomas Aquinas to write the prayers for the Mass. When Saint Thomas read his work first, Saint Bonaventure wept and tore his manuscript into small pieces. These are the beautiful prayers of today’s Mass.

Benedict XVI says that the three pillars of Saint John Paul II were the Cross, Our Lady and the Eucharist. For a stool to stand up it needs at least three legs. What are the three legs, the three pillars of our spiritual life? Saint John Paul II explains his feelings about the Eucharist: “I have always been convinced that the chapel is a place of special inspiration. What a privilege to be able to live and work in the shadow of His Presence. It is not always necessary to enter physically into the chapel in order to enter spiritually into the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.” What is the place of the Eucharist in my life? We can ask Saint John Paul II to help us to try to come here more often. We need more faith in his real presence.

If we believe that Jesus is in the tabernacle, we will spend more time with him, we will try to drop into our nearby church as often as we can. In the book The Hobbit, when Bilbo is lost in the caves, he meets Gollum, and Gollum tries to eat him. Bilbo proposes a game of riddles to save his life. When Bilbo couldn’t guess the last riddle, and Gollum was getting closer to eating him, Bilbo cries out in desperation: “Time, give me more time.” This was the answer to the riddle and saved his life. This is the answer to all our problems. Jesus is telling us the same thing: “Time, give me more time.” We need more time in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

Saint John Paul II is buried in Saint Peter’s basilica between the chapel of the Pieta of Michael Angelo and the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, emphasising his two main loves: Mary and Jesus. We should bury ourselves too between these two pillars.

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