8 JUNE – THE CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Who is this who comes up, embalming the desert of the world with her clouds of incense and myrrh and perfumes unnumbered? The Bride has awakened of her own accord today. Full of desire to please Him, and very lovely, the Church is standing round the golden litter on which is throned her Spouse in His glory. Near Him are drawn up the valiant ones of Israel, the Priests and Levites of the Lord who are strong even with God. Go forth, daughters of Sion! Fix your gaze on the true Solomon, so beautiful in the diadem with which His mother crowned Him on the day of His espousals, the day of the joy of His heart! (Canticles iii. 5-11)

That diadem is the Flesh received by the divine Word from the Virgin Mother when He took our human nature for His Bride. By this most perfect of Bodies, by this sacred Flesh, there is every day continued in the Eucharistic banquet the ineffable mystery of the marriage between man and eternal Wisdom. For our true Solomon, then, each day is the day of the joy of His heart, the day of nuptial rejoicing: could anything be more just than that once in the year holy Church should give full freedom to the transports of the love she has for her divine Spouse who resides with her in the Sacrament of Love, although in a hidden manner? It is on this account that in today’s Mass the priest has consecrated two Hosts, and that after having received one of these in Holy Communion, He has placed the other in the glittering Ostensorium which is to be carried in his trembling hands beneath a canopy while hymns of triumphant joy are being sung, and the Faithful in prostrate adoration are being blessed by their Jesus, who thus comes among them.

This solemn homage to the sacred Host is a later institution than the Feast itself of Corpus Christi. Pope Urban IV does not speak of it in his Bull of the Institution in 1264. Twenty-two years later, Durandus of Mende wrote his Rational of Divine Offices in which he several times mentions the Processions which were then in use. But he has not a word on that of Corpus Christi. On the other hand, Popes Martin V and Eugenius IV, in their Constitutions (May 26, 1429; May 26, 1433), plainly show that it was then in use, for they grant Indulgences to them that are present at it. Donatus Bossius of Milan tells us in his Chronicle that on Thursday the 24th of May, 1404, “there was carried, for the first time solemnly, the Body of Christ in the streets of Padua, which has since become the custom.” Some writers have concluded from these words that the Procession of Corpus Christi was not in use before that date, and that it first originated at Padua. But the words of Bossius scarcely justify such an inference, and the words he uses may be understood of a local custom.

Indeed, we find mention made of this Procession in a Manuscript of the Church of Chartres in 1330, in an Act of the Chapter of Tournai in 1325, in a Council of Paris in 1323, and in one held at Sens in 1320. Indulgences are granted by these two Councils to those who observe abstinence and fasting on the vigil of Corpus Christi, and they add these words: “As to the solemn Procession made on the Thursday’s Feast, when the holy Sacrament is carried, seeing that it appears to have been introduced in these our times by a sort of inspiration, we prescribe nothing at present, and leave all concerning it to the devotion of the clergy and people.” So that the initiative to the institution of today’s Procession seems to have been made by the devotion of the Faithful, and that this admirable completion given to our Feast began in France, and from there was adopted in all the Churches of the West.

There is ground for supposing that at first the sacred Host was not carried in these Processions as it is now. It was veiled over or enclosed in a sort of rich shrine. Even so far back as the eleventh century it had been the custom in some places to carry It in this way during the Processions of Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday morning. We have elsewhere spoken of these devotional practices, which, however, were not so much for the direct purpose of honouring the Blessed Sacrament, as for that of bringing more forward the mystery of those solemnities. Be this as it may, the use of ostensoria, or monstrances, as they are termed in a Council held in 1452 at Cologne, soon followed the institution of the new Procession.

They were made at first in shape like little towers. In a Manuscript Missal dated 1374, the letter D, which is the first of the Collect for the feast of Corpus Christi, gives us a miniature illumination representing a Bishop, accompanied by two acolytes, who is carrying the Host in a golden tower which has four openings. But Catholic piety soon began to offer to its Lord all the exterior honour it could: to that Lord who hides Himself and His glory in the Mystery of Love. And to the Sun of Justice thus shrouded it suggested the compensation, poor though it must necessarily be, of a crystal sphere surrounded by rays of gold, or of other precious material, and of exposing the sacred Host within it. Not to mention other, and more ancient records, we find a very marked instance of the rapidity with which this use of the monstrance was adopted: it occurs in a Gradual of the period of Louis XII (1498–1515): the initial letter of the Introit for Corpus Christi has within it a sun or sphere, like those in present use. It is being carried on the shoulders of two figures vested in copes, who are followed by the King and several Cardinals and Prelates.

And yet the Protestant heresy which was then beginning gave the name of novelty, superstition and idolatry to these natural developments of Catholic worship prompted, as they were, by faith and love. The Council of Trent pronounced anathema on these calumnies and, in a Chapter apart, showed how rightly the Church had acted in countenancing these practices. The words of the Council are as follows: “The holy Council declares that there has been most piously and religiously introduced into God’s Church the practice that each year, on a certain special feast, the august and venerable Sacrament should be honoured with singular veneration and solemnity, and that It should be reverently and with every honour carried in processions through the public roads and places. For it is most just that certain holidays should be appointed on which all Christians should, with special and unusual demonstrations, evince their gratitude and mindfulness towards their common Lord and Redeemer for this so unspeakable and truly divine favour in which is represented His victory and triumph over death. And it was also necessary that thus invincible truth should triumph over lying and heresy, and that her enemies, seeing all that splendour and being in the midst of such great joy of the whole Church, should either grow wearied and acknowledge their being beaten and broken, or, being ashamed and confounded, should be converted.”