St. Anthony the Abbot Catholic Church

Today we celebrate the solemnity of Corpus Christi—the Body of Christ and the Blood of Christ. This feast is part of the great unfolding of the Church year, in which we celebrated the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday, His Ascension into heaven, the coming of the Holy  Spirit at Pentecost, and the Holy Trinity just last Sunday. We have been doing a lot of celebrating. So why is today special? Precisely because today we celebrate the fulfillment of a promise: the promise Jesus made when He said, “Behold, I am with you until the end of the age.”  I’m talking about the Eucharist—the real and tangible presence of Jesus Christ with us.

If what the Church teaches is actually true, and the bread and wine actually transubstantiate into Jesus’ Body and Blood, then what does that mean to us? It means that the Eucharist is the most intimate encounter we can have with Jesus Christ on this side of death. It is mind-blowing to think that I can take Jesus, my God into my person, into my heart, flowing through my veins.

It’s unfathomable, really, to think that a transcendent God would become a man, and then that man would command His friends to eat His flesh and drink His blood, and that that would give them eternal life. This is NOT NORMAL! And so, it is admittedly very difficult to believe. Priests, too, sometimes struggle to believe. Once upon a time, 263 A.D., to be exact, there was this priest, Father Peter of Prague. He was on a pilgrimage to Rome from his home, presumably in Prague, and along the way he stopped in a little Italian town called Bolsena. This priest had been struggling in his belief in the Eucharist. He, too, found it hard to believe that the bread and the wine actually changed into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Still, the priest was faithful to his duties, and went to the chapel to celebrate Mass. And while he was celebrating Mass, an amazing thing happened. As he elevated the host, the host began to bleed. The blood dripped from the host onto the corporal, the square white cloth that lays on the altar. Father Peter, probably terrified at this point, stopped the Mass and asked to be taken to see the Pope, who  just happened to be staying in Orvieto, just a couple of miles away. The Pope, Urban IV, sent his delegates to investigate this extraordinary occurrence. The miracle was quickly confirmed, and the host and corporal were brought to the Pope in Orvieto, where he enshrined the stained corporal in the cathedral for all to look upon and believe. That corporal is still hanging above the altar in the Orvieto cathedral to this day. But the story doesn’t end there. Pope Urban, so moved by this Eucharistic miracle, set aside a very special day on which the Church would always commemorate the miracle that is the Eucharist—the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. That day is today, the solemnity of Corpus Christi. Pope Urban then commissioned a certain Dominican priest by the name of Thomas Aquinas to compose a hymn and special Mass prayers for this newly minted solemnity.

And so, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote the words to Pange Lingua Gloriosi. You may know it by its last two verses, which we sing at the end of Adoration: Tantum ergo sacramentum/ veneremur cernui/ et antiquum documentum/ novo cedat ritui/ praestet fides supplementum/ sensuum defectui. These last five words mean: faith supplies (evidence) where the senses fail. On that day in 1263 in Bolsena, Father Peter had evidence of the True Presence. He held it in his hands. When we receive the Eucharist, sure, it looks like bread and wine, tastes like bread and wine. But faith supplies what is lacking in the senses. We know that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ based on this faith—faith that Jesus will do what He says He will do. St. Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, wrote: For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night He was handed over, took bread, and, after He had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Jesus promised it, and so we believe that He transforms this bread and wine into His Body and Blood through the words spoken by the priest, who is ordained in a line of unbroken succession from the Apostles themselves. As Catholics, we know and believe that this Sacrament, the Most Blessed Sacrament, is the REAL PRESENCE of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Faith gives us the ability to look upon the Sacred Host and say, like  St. Thomas, “My Lord and  my God.”