In “Savoy Truffle”, a song from the Beatles’ famous White Album, George Harrison writes, “You know that what you eat you are.” There is truth in the idea that the molecules of the things we eat become the molecules of our own bodies. We do become what we eat. This simple and common sense thought lies at the heart of the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist or Mass or Lord’s Supper.

On the night before he was executed, Jesus, at a Passover meal with friends, took bread, gave thanks, broke the bread and gave it to these friends. “Take, eat, this is my body,” he said. “ D o this,” he com- manded. In obedience to the Lord’s command, Christians still do this - take, thank, break and share bread.

Through prayer of the Church and by the power of the Holy Spirit, Christians believe that Christ becomes actually present in the Eucharistic bread - that this bread is really the Body of Christ.

It is an idea that readers of the Gospel of called John (6:51) will recognize. Thus, those receiving the Blessed Sacrament are empowered to become what they eat - the Body of Christ.

Today (Thursday) is the Feast of Corpus Christi. “Corpus Christi” means “the Body of Christ.” The festival was the idea of a Belgian Augustinian nun, Sister Juliana, who lived at Liège in the thirteenth century.

After several visions, she argued that greater

attention attention and revere nce should be given to the Eucharist or Mass or Lord’s Supper in the Church since it is the central act of Christian worship. Her idea spread quickly from her local bishop to Pope Urban IV who promoted the idea of the festival.

Urban also recruited the greatest theologian of that time, St. Thomas Aquinas, to write prayers and hymns for the feast.

They are still in use today. Corpus Christi celebrates the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. The catholic tradition - observed by Orthodox, Roman, Anglican and Lutheran churches The Eucharistic meal is seen as a real foretaste of the Lord’s final banquet referred to in both Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

In the middle ages, harsh everyday life was understood by many as God’s punishment for human sinfulness.

Being so sinful, most Christians (especially the abused peasant classes) felt themselves unworthy to touch or to receive Christ. They were afraid to touch Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. As a result, the custom of looking at the Body and Blood of Christ (called Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament) evolved. Most people did not receive communion (except at Christmas and Easter) because they felt unworthy.

On Corpus Christi, the local Church would march in procession around the parish with the priest carrying the Eucharistic Body of Christ in a large viewing device (called a monstrance).

The idea was that the sinful world could see and pray to its Saviour Christ. The modern custom of the priest lifting up the consecrated bread and wine during the Great Thanksgiving prayer has similar origins.

Corpus Christi reminds Christians of the continuing real presence of the risen Christ in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist - especially now that the Christmas and Easter Cycles of stories and seasons (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Ascension) has ended. Like Pentecost, Corpus Christi reminds us that throughout the Sundays of the rest of the year, Jesus walks with us just as we walked with Him from Advent to Ascension. We are now the tabernacles of the Holy One.

In Book of Common Prayer language, Corpus Christi is the first Sunday after Trinity.

Since Vatican II, the Roman church and the other catholic communions are staring to call this time “ordinary time” in the Lectionary (which most Gregorian calendar churches also now use).