The Body and Blood of Christ

For the feast of the Eucharist and its procession.

Corpus Christi began with a Belgian nun’s visions and a Bohemian miracle, and was extended to the whole Church in 1264 with an office written by St. Thomas Aquinas — the finest liturgical poetry in Latin. On this feast the Blessed Sacrament goes out into the streets.

The Prayer of the Feast

O God, who in this wonderful Sacrament
have left us a memorial of Your Passion:
grant us, we pray,
so to revere the sacred mysteries of Your Body and Blood
that we may always experience in ourselves
the fruits of Your redemption.

Who live and reign with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

For the Procession

Lord Jesus, today You are carried through the streets
where we work and shop and argue and hurry.

Bless these roads and the people on them,
the houses we pass and the ones who did not come out to look.

You came into the world for all of them,
not only for those of us walking behind You. Amen.

The Hymns of the Feast

• Pange Lingua, whose last two verses are the Tantum Ergo.
• Lauda Sion, the sequence sung before the Gospel.
• Adoro Te Devote, for adoration.
• O Salutaris Hostia, at exposition.

About This Feast

Corpus Christi is kept on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, or transferred to the following Sunday in many countries. The procession is the point: for one day a year, the Church stops arguing about whether the world is watching and simply carries the Blessed Sacrament out into it.