Find out more about this wonderful solemnity.
The Feast of Corpus Christi originated in France around 1246 through the Bishop of Liege, who encouraged the celebration. It was extended to the Universal Church when St Thomas Aquinas proposed to Pope Urban IV that he create a Feast solely to honour the Most Holy Eucharist. Pope Urban IV instituted this Feast in 1264.
The Church teaches that Christ becomes truly present in the Eucharist through the conversion of the entire substance of bread into his body and through the conversion of the entire substance of wine into his blood, leaving only unchanged those properties or accidents of bread and wine, that is, their colour, taste, shape, quantity, which are open to the senses.
So, the appearances of bread remain but there is no longer bread, the appearances of wine remain, but there is no longer wine. Through the words of Institution, and the coming down of the Holy Spirit, there is affected a miraculous transformation or transubstantiation into Christ’s body and blood and this can only be perceived through the gift of faith.
Catechism, 1324: “The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life. The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch.”
“The soul hungers for God, and nothing but God can satiate it. Therefore, He came to dwell on earth and assumed a body in order that this body might become the food of our souls”.
–St John Marie Vianney
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