The feast of Corpus Christi is important because the sacramental Presence of Christ is the very heart of Christian civilization. As the great Catholic historian Christopher Dawson wrote in Religion and the Rise of Western Culture:
The preservation and development of … liturgical tradition was one of the main preoccupations of the Church in the dark age that followed the barbarian conquest, since it was in this way that the vitality and continuity of the inner life of Christendom which was the seed of the new order were preserved.
It is through this liturgical tradition and through the grace of the sacraments that the life and light of Christ are made manifest in human culture. The Eucharist is, therefore, together with the other sacraments, the spiritual conduit through which Christ becomes present in history. This Christ-life made present in the sacraments is the very light by which we see and the life by which we live.
As Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, reminds us, “[o]ne is Church and one is a member thereof, not through a sociological adherence, but precisely through incorporation in this Body of the Lord through baptism and the Eucharist.”
Furthermore, as the future pope explained in The Spirit of the Liturgy, it is through this Eucharistic presence that Christ is present in his Church:
The Eucharistic Presence in the tabernacle does not set another view of the Eucharist alongside or against the Eucharistic celebration, but simply signifies its complete fulfillment. For this Presence has the effect, of course, of keeping the Eucharist forever in church. The church never becomes a lifeless space but is always filled with the presence of the Lord, which comes out of the celebration, leads us into it, and always makes us participants in the cosmic Eucharist. What man of faith has not experienced this? A church without the Eucharistic Presence is somehow dead, even when it invites people to pray. But a church in which the eternal light is burning before the tabernacle is always alive, is always something more than a building made of stones. In this place the Lord is always waiting for me, calling me, wanting to make me “Eucharistic”. In this way, he prepares me for the Eucharist, sets me in motion toward his return.
Although Cardinal Ratzinger’s words refer to the presence of the Eucharist in individual tabernacles in individual churches, they apply of course to the Eucharistic presence in the Church herself throughout all the centuries, from the first to the last.
Hearts full of joy
Taking the Cardinal’s words and applying them to history, we can say that history “never becomes a lifeless space” as long as the Eucharist is present “but is always filled with the presence of the Lord."
The presence of the Eucharist in history makes history itself and all those participating in it, “participants in the cosmic Eucharist.” It makes time a participant in eternity. It makes the past and the future coeval with God’s omnipresence. History “without the Eucharistic Presence is somehow dead.”
It is Christ, present in the Sacrament, who gives life. It is he who makes all things new – and all things beautiful. It is his Eucharistic Presence in all ages which, as J. R. R. Tolkien proclaimed, is “the one great thing to love on earth."
Well may we approach the Blessed Sacrament on the glorious feast of Corpus Christi with hearts full of joy.
~
Joseph Pearce is the author of Benedict XVI: Defender of the Faith (TAN Books).
