In his Apostolic Letter Mane nobiscum Domine, Saint John Paul II urged for the observance of the procession on Corpus Christi: “This year let us also celebrate with particular devotion the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, with its traditional procession. Our faith in the God who took flesh in order to become our companion along the way needs to be everywhere proclaimed, especially in our streets and homes, as an expression of our grateful love and as an inexhaustible source of blessings (MnD, n.18). Then, in the encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, that saintly Pope added, “In many places, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is also an important daily practice and becomes an inexhaustible source of holiness. The devout participation of the faithful in the Eucharistic procession on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ is a grace from the Lord which yearly brings joy to those who take part in it. Other positive signs of Eucharistic faith and love might also be mentioned” (EE, n. 10).
Subsequently, the late Pope Benedict XVI, in his testimonial to Saint Juliana of Liège, said fidelity to the encounter with the Christ in the Eucharist in Holy Mass on Sunday is essential for the journey of faith, but let us also seek to pay frequent visits to the Lord present in the Tabernacle! In gazing in adoration at the consecrated Host, we discover the gift of God’s love, we discover Jesus’ Passion and Cross and likewise his Resurrection. It is precisely through our gazing in adoration that the Lord draws us towards him into his mystery in order to transform us as he transforms the bread and the wine” (General Audience, Wednesday, 17 November 2010). Most recently, in a homily on Corpus Christi, Pope Francis said, “The procession with the Blessed Sacrament…reminds us that we are called to go out and bring Jesus to others. To go out with enthusiasm, bringing Christ to those we meet in our daily lives (6 June 2021).”
The Mass – Worship of the Eucharist Outside of Mass
The supreme act of adoration and the source and summit of the Christian life is the celebration of the Mass and that celebration is meant to be prolonged and intensified through Eucharistic worship outside of the Mass. There is an important relationship between Holy Thursday and Corpus Christi. On Holy Thursday, the Church commemorates the Institution of the Eucharist by Jesus at the Last Supper. Yet, we also commemorate so many other events on that day and over the course of the Sacred Triduum, that starting in the thirteenth century, the Church instituted the feast of Corpus Christi as a separate feast day, observed after Pentecost. Without being imbued in the sorrows of Christ’s passion and death, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, it is possible to better rejoice in the extraordinary gift of the Eucharist itself.
Jesus is truly with us and truly present in every tabernacle in every Catholic church in the world. Christ has given us His body to eat and His blood to drink. Such a great gift is both humbling and . . . unsettling, at the same time. Jesus’ followers thought the same thing. Catholics also believe in transubstantiation. That is, that while the bread and wine continue to have all the appearances of bread and wine (color, shape, taste, calories, gluten etc.), at the consecration their substance is changed completely so as to actually BE Christ’s body and Christ’s blood. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: ‘Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation’” (CCC, n. 1376). O sacrum convivium, in quo Christus sumitur—How holy the feast in which Christ is our food!
Nature and dignity 