9781644135945

The Light of the World
Prayer
Pour forth the spirit of Thy love into our hearts, O Lord, that all they whom Thou hast nourished
with this heavenly bread may, through Thy paternal goodness, be of one heart and mind.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Thursday
Feast of Corpus Christi
The feast of Corpus Christi was established as a day of thanksgiving for the institution of the
Holy Eucharist as a sacrifice and a sacrament. “He fed them [the faithful] with the fat of wheat,
and filled them with honey out of the rock [Christ], alleluia, alleluia, alleluia” (Introit). Christ
in His humanity and in His divinity, in body and soul, has become both our high priest and our
sacrifice, our food and our friend, and resides in our tabernacles.
The promise of the Holy Eucharist (Gospel). The multitude which followed Christ into the
desert and lingered with Him on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, was fed with a miraculous bread.
During the following night Christ astonished His disciples by walking on the water, showing
them that He was the master of nature and the elements. The following day the people flocked
to Him again, for they hoped that He would again provide them with food. Christ spoke to them
in the synagogue at Capharnaum. “My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He
that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood, abideth in Me and I in him. As the living Father
hath sent Me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth Me, the same also shall live by Me. This is
the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead. He that
eateth this bread, shall live forever” ( Jn 6:56–59). Many of the Jews complained, “This saying
is hard, and who can hear it?” and at once they left Him. We, however, accept this teaching of
Christ, as did St. Peter: “Lord, . . . Thou hast the words of eternal life” ( Jn 6:69). We believe, for
we know that Thou art God.
The institution of the Holy Eucharist. “Brethren, I have received of the Lord that which also
I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread,
and giving thanks, broke, and said: Take ye and eat, this is My body which shall be delivered
for you; this do for the commemoration of Me. In like manner also the chalice, after He had
supped, saying: This chalice is the new testament in My blood; this do ye, as often as you shall
drink, for the commemoration of Me. For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink this
chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord until He come. Therefore whosoever shall eat this
bread or drink of the chalice unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.
But let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice. For he
that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning
the body of the Lord” (Epistle).
The Lord promised the Eucharist and gave it to us. That which we preserve in our tabernacles,
that which we worship and adore on our altars, is not mere bread and wine, but the real flesh
and blood of the Lord. He is present there entire and undivided, with the fullness of His divinity
and of His humanity. He is there “full of grace and truth. . . . And of His fullness we all have
received” ( Jn 1:14, 16). Christ lives and remains with us in the Blessed Sacrament. He is there,
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