Patrick Comerford
This week began with Trinity Sunday (4 June 2023). Over these few weeks after Trinity Sunday, I am reflecting each morning in these ways:
1, Looking at relevant images or stained glass window in a church, chapel or cathedral I know;
2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
However, today is the feast of Corpus Christi, and I am digressing this morning as I reflect on this day in the Church Calendar.
The chapel in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge … designed by William Wilkins as a miniature replica of the chapel in King’s College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)The Feast of Corpus Christi:
The Feast of Corpus Christi is marked in the calendar of many Anglican churches as Corpus Christi. Although it is not a feast in the Calendar of the Church of Ireland, Corpus Christi features in the calendar of the Church of England on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, and this day is being celebrated in many English churches and cathedrals today. For example, there is a Solemn Eucharist in Lichfield Cathedral at 5.30 this evening. Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, is celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi with the Sung Eucharist at 7 pm, followed by sherry and shortbread refreshments in the new café.
Although Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church in Stony Stratford has been in the Anglo-Catholic tration, Corpus Christ is not being celebrated there today, and instead the Corpus Christi celebrations have been transferred to next Sunday (11 June 2023).
Traditionally, there has a Corpus Christi procession in Cambridge each year, with a brass band and hymn-singing starting with the Sung Eucharist at St Bene’t’s Church at 7 p.m., then moving along Trumpington Street, passing Corpus Christi College, Fitzbillies and the Fitzwilliam Museum as it processes to Little Saint Mary’s for Benediction, followed by refreshments. The preacher in Cambridge this evening is the Revd Jennifer Totney, Director of Contextual Training at Westcott House.
Little Saint Mary’s says this is always a ‘most enjoyable event’ and an act of witness through the streets of Cambridge. ‘We are especially keen for this to be well supported this year after the last few years of Covid and the recent loss of our friend and colleague, the Revd Anna Matthews, the former Vicar of Saint Bene’t’s, who helped start this annual tradition some years ago. So please do come along and support.’
Pusey House in Oxford has a number of Corpus Christi celebrations this week including Choral Evensong in the Chapel yesterday for the Eve of Corpus Christi with music by Brewer and Byrd. Today, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, there is High Mass at 6:30 pm with Father Guy Willis, of Saint Bene’t’s Church, Kentish Town, preaching and with music by Vaughan Williams and Byrd.This is followed with procession to Saint Barnabas Church, Jericho, for Benediction.
In Rose Macaulay’s The Towers of Trebizond, Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg says Mass in a corner of the public gardens in Trebizond to mark the Feast of Corpus Christi. After Mass, he holds a procession round the gardens, chanting Ave Verum, stops, preaches a short sermon in English, and says that Corpus Christi is a great Christian festival and holy day, ‘always kept in the Church of England.’
The survival of Corpus Christi in the Anglican tradition is also illustrated in the history of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Formally known as the College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary, this is the only Cambridge college founded by the townspeople of Cambridge: it was established in 1352 by the Guilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Today, Corpus Christi is best known to visitors to Cambridge for its clock, the Chronophage or ‘Time Eater,’ which is accurate only once every five minutes. But the Old Court in Corpus is the oldest court in any Oxbridge college.
The new college acquired all the guild’s lands, ceremonies and revenues, including the annual Corpus Christi procession through the streets of Cambridge to Magdalene Bridge, during which the Eucharistic host was carried by a priest and several of the college’s treasures were carried by the Master and fellows, before returning to the college for an extravagant dinner.
The procession in Cambridge continued until the Reformation, but in 1535 William Sowode, who was Parker’s predecessor as Master (1523-1544), stopped this tradition. However, the college retains its pre-Reformation name and continues to have a grand dinner on the feast of Corpus Christi.
In the calendar of the Church of England, Corpus Christi is known as The Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion (Corpus Christi) and has the status of a Festival (Common Worship, p. 529). But in many parts of the Roman Catholic Church, it has now been moved from the Thursday after Trinity Sunday to the following Sunday. Yet, in the Roman Catholic Church, the feast of Corpus Christi is one of the five occasions in a year when a bishop must not to be away from his diocese unless for a grave and urgent reason.
Corpus Christi does not commemorate any one particular event in the life of Christ or in the history of the Church – but the same can be said too of Trinity Sunday (last Sunday, 4 June 2023) or the Feast of Christ the King (the Sunday before Advent). Instead, this day celebrates the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
Corpus Christi first made an appearance in the Church Calendar at the suggestion of Saint Juliana of Liège, a 13th century Augustinian nun, when she suggested the feastday to her local bishop, Bishop Robert de Thorete of Liège and the Archdeacon of Liège, Jacques Pantaléon.
The bishop introduced the feastday to the calendar of his diocese in 1246, and the archdeacon subsequently introduced it to the calendar of the Western Church when he became Pope Urban IV in 1264, when he issued a papal bull, Transiturus de hoc mundo.
A liturgy for the feast was composed by the great Dominican theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas, who also wrote the hymns Verbum Supernum Prodiens for Lauds and Pange Lingua for Vespers of Corpus Christi.
The last two verses of Pange Lingua are often sung as a separate Latin hymn, Tantum Ergo, while the last two verses of Verbum Supernum Prodiens are sometimes sung separately as O Salutaris Hostia.
This was the very first universal feast ever sanctioned by a Pope. Corpus Christi was retained in Lutheran calendars until about 1600, and continues to be celebrated in some Lutheran churches.
Anglicans generally and officially believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist – is there any ‘presence’ that is not ‘real’? But the specifics of that belief range from transubstantiation, to something akin to a belief in a ‘pneumatic’ presence, from objective reality to pious silence.
Anglican teaching thinking about the Eucharist is best summarised in the Prayer of Humble Access:
We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen. – (Book of Common Prayer, 1662)
The classic Anglican aphorism with regard to this debate is found in a poem by John Donne that is often attributed to Queen Elizabeth I:
His was the Word that spake it;
He took the bread and brake it;
and what that Word did make it;
I do believe and take it.
This, in many ways, also reflects Orthodox theology, which does not use the term ‘transubstantiation’ to systematically describe how the Gifts become the Body and Blood of Christ. Instead, the Orthodox speak of the Eucharist as a ‘Sacred Mystery’ use only the word ‘change.’ That moment of transformation of change does not take place at one particular moment during the Liturgy, but is completed at the Epiclesis.
And that completion is affirmed by our ‘Amen’ at the distribution and reception.
But when we say ‘Amen’ to those words, ‘The Body of Christ,’ at the distribution we are also saying ‘Amen’ to the Church as the Body of Christ, as Corpus Christi: ‘He [Christ] is the of the body, the church’ (Colossians 1: 18), ‘which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all’ (Ephesians 1: 23).
In the act of communion, the entire Church – past, present, and even future – is united in eternity. In Orthodox Eucharistic theology, although many separate Divine Liturgies may be celebrated, there is only one Bread and one Cup throughout all the world and throughout all time.
Corpus Christi is not just a celebration for Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics. It is part of the shared pre-Reformation heritage of the Church, and long pre-dates Tridentine teachings on the Eucharist and transubstantiation.
It is a reminder too that the Eucharist is supposed to be a regular celebration for the Church, and not just once a month, once a quarter or once a year. As someone reminded me recently, if Christ had meant us to celebrate the Eucharist only on special occasions, he would have used cake and champagne at the last Supper. But he used ordinary everyday bread and table wine.
Corpus Christi in Dublin
In the Church of Ireland in Dublin, a Chantry Guild of Corpus Christ attached to Saint Michan’s Church survived for decades after the Reformation, and was still in existence in the mid-17th century.
Over forty years ago, on Good Friday, 9 April 1982, I was involved in organising and as chair of Christian CND preached at an ecumenical service outside the US Embassy in Dublin to protest against proposals to name a US nuclear submarine Corpus Christi. Those who took part included Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Methodists, Mennonties and Quakers.
A few days earlier, nine of us, calling ourselves ‘Corpus Christ Witness’ and writing from the Student Christian Movement (SCM) offices then in Rathgar, Dublin, signed an open letter published in Irish newspapers condemning the proposal as blasphemous. We said that by giving that name to a ‘hunter killer’ nuclear submarine, the world was faced ‘with the choice of which God we will serve: Jesus of Nazareth, who died that all might live, or the new ‘Christ,’ which lives that all may die.’
In the US, the choice of name was condemned by 259 Roman Catholic bishops, archbishops and cardinals, 25 Episcopalian bishops, and more than 250 religious orders, denominations, organisation and councils of churches, including the United Church of Christ, the National Assembly of Women Religious and the Unitarian Universalist Association.
The Chronophage or ‘Time Eater’ at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is accurate only once every five minutes … in Orthodox Eucharistic theology, there is only one Bread and one Cup throughout all time (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)John 6: 51-58 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 51 ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’
52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ 53 So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’
Today’s prayer:
The theme in the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) this week is ‘Protecting the Environment in Zambia. This theme was introduced on Sunday by USPG’s Regional Manager for Africa, Fran Mate, with a reflection from Zambia for the United Nations World Environment Day on Monday.
The USPG Prayer invites us to pray this morning (Thursday 8 June 2023, Corpus Christi):
Let us pray for the Church worldwide. May it seek to be Christ’s body on earth and through sharing his life bring life to others.
Collect:
Lord Jesus Christ,
we thank you that in this wonderful sacrament
you have given us the memorial of your passion:
grant us so to reverence the sacred mysteries
of your body and blood
that we may know within ourselves
and show forth in our lives
the fruits of your redemption;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
(Common Worship, p. 407)
Post Communion Prayer:
All praise to you, our God and Father,
for you have fed us with the bread of heaven
and quenched our thirst from the true vine:
hear our prayer that, being grafted into Christ,
we may grow together in unity
and feast with him in the kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
(Common Worship, p. 407).
Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow>
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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