The Corpus Christi sequence

Aquinas’ sequence, sung before the Gospel on Corpus Christi.

One of only four sequences kept in the Roman Missal, and the longest. Aquinas wrote it for the new feast of Corpus Christi, and it is doctrine set to verse — an explanation of transubstantiation that can be sung.

The Sequence

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.

See today before us laid
the living and life-giving Bread,
theme for praise and joy profound.

The same which at the sacred board
was by our incarnate Lord
given to His apostles round.

What He did at supper seated,
Christ ordained to be repeated,
in His memory divine.

Wherefore now with adoration
we the Host of our salvation
consecrate from bread and wine.

Here beneath these signs are hidden
priceless things, to sense forbidden;
signs, 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,
takes the food that cannot waste.

Good and evil men are taking
of one food, one end not making;
these for life and those for death.

Death is to the one, to the other life;
see how like participation
is with unlike issue rife.

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 bestow,
grant us with Your saints, though lowest,
where the heavenly feast You show,
fellow heirs and guests to be. Amen. Alleluia.

About This Sequence

The middle verses are theology in metre: Christ whole under either species, undivided when the Host is broken, received to life by the good and to judgment by the unworthy. Aquinas is compressing the Summa into something a congregation can sing, which may be the single most impressive thing he did.