Celebrating Corpus Christi
If we want to understand the meaning of Corpus Christi, the best thing to do is simply to look at the liturgical form in which the Church celebrates and expounds the significance of this feast. Over and above the elements common to all Christian feasts, there are three components especially that constitute the distinctive shape of the way we celebrate this day.
First there is what we are doing right now, meeting together around the Lord, standing before the Lord, for the Lord, and thus standing side by side together. Next there is walking with the Lord, the procession. And finally there is the heart and the climax of it, kneeling before the Lord, the adoration, glorifying him and rejoicing in his presence. Standing before the Lord, walking with the Lord, and kneeling before the Lord, these three therefore are the constituent elements of this day, and we are now going to reflect on them a little.
One Body
Standing before the Lord: In the early Church there was an expression for this: statio. And when I mention that term, we touch on the oldest roots of what happens on Corpus Christi and what Corpus Christi is about. At the time when Christianity was spreading out across the world, from the beginning its representatives laid great emphasis on having in each city just one bishop, only one altar. This was supposed to express the unity brought by the one Lord, who embraces us in his arms outstretched on the Cross, transcending all the barriers and limits traced by earthly life, and makes us one Body. And this is the inmost meaning of the Eucharist, that we, receiving the one bread, enter into this one heart and thus become a living organism, the one Body of the Lord.
The Eucharist is not a private business, carried on in a circle of friends, in a club of like-minded people, who seek out and get together with those who already suit them; but just as the Lord allowed himself to be crucified outside the city wall, before all the world, and stretches out his hands to everyone, thus the Eucharist is the public worship of all those whom the Lord calls, irrespective of their personal make-up. It is particularly characteristic of him, as he demonstrated in his earthly life, to have men of the most diverse groupings, social backgrounds, and personal views brought together in the greater whole of his word and his love. It was characteristic of the Eucharist, then, in the Mediterranean world in which Christianity first developed, for an aristocrat who had found his way into Christianity to sit there side by side with a Corinthian dock worker, a miserable slave, who under Roman law was not even regarded as a man but was treated as chattel. It was characteristic of the Eucharist for the philosopher to sit next to the illiterate man, the converted prostitute and the converted tax collector next to the religious ascetic who had found his way to Jesus Christ. And we can see in the writings of the New Testament how people resisted this again and again, wanted to stay in their own circle, and yet this very thing remained the point of the Eucharist: gathering together, crossing the boundaries, and leading men through the Lord into a new unity.
When Christianity grew in numbers, this exterior form could no longer be maintained in the cities. As early as the time of persecutions, the titular churches in Rome, for instance, were already developing as precursors of the later parishes. Even here, of course, the public nature and the given structure of worship remained, so that people who would otherwise never meet were brought together. But this opening up of relationships within a single space was no longer sufficiently visible. That is why they developed the custom of the statio. That means that the pope, as the one bishop of Rome, especially in the course of Lent, leads the worship for the whole of Rome and goes right through each of the titular churches. The Christians meet together, go to the church together, and thus in each particular church the whole becomes visible and touches each individual. This basic idea is taken up by Corpus Christi. It is a statio urbis: we open up the parish churches; we open up for ourselves all the odd corners and farthest reaches of this city to be brought together to the Lord, so as to be at one through him. Here, too, we are together irrespective of party or class, rulers and ruled, men who work with their hands and those who do mental work, men of this tendency or that. And this is the essential thing, that we have been brought together by the Lord, that he leads us to meet each other. This moment should issue a call to us to accept one another inwardly, open ourselves up, go to meet each other, that even in the distraction of everyday life we should maintain this state of being brought together by the Lord.
Our cities, as we all know, have become places of solitude of a kind never known before. And nowhere are people so lonely and abandoned as perhaps in apartment complexes, where they are packed together most closely. A friend told me how once, when he had moved into a big city in the north, he was on his way out of the apartment complex, and he greeted someone else who lived in that complex, but the person just stared at him in amazement and said, "You've mistaken me for someone else!" Where people are just masses, a greeting turns into a mistake. But the Lord brings us together and opens us up, so that we can accept one another, belong to one another, so that in standing before him we can learn again to stand next to each other. Thus, the Marienplatz itself comes into its own true role. How often we hurry past each other here. Today this is the setting for our being together, which, as a duty and a gift, will continue. There are of course many big gatherings, yet so often it is what we are against that unites us, more than what we are for. And it is almost always the case that we are brought together by something we want, and this interest is directed against other such interests. But what unites us today is not the private interest of this group or that, but the interest that God takes in us, to which we can calmly confide all our own interests and wishes. We are standing for the Lord. And the more we stand for the Lord and before the Lord, the more we stand with one another, and our capacity to understand one another grows again, the capacity to recognize each other as people, as brothers and sisters, and thus, in being together, to build the basis and to open up the possibilities of humanity and of life.
Standing together in the Lord's presence, and with the Lord, has resulted from the beginning in what it has indeed at its heart presupposed, walking to the Lord. For we are not automatically side by side. That is why a statio could happen only if people gathered beforehand and went to each other in the processio. That is the second call issued by Corpus Christi. We can stand side by side only if, first of all, under the guidance of the Lord, we go to each other. We can come to the Lord only in this procedere, in this moving out and moving forward, by transcending our own prejudices, our limits, and our barriers, going forward, going toward him, and moving to the point at which we can meet each other. This also is as true in the realm of the Church as in the world. Even in the Church—let us lament before God—there are conflict, opposition, and mistrust. Processio, procedere, should challenge us to move forward again, to go ahead toward him, and to subject ourselves to his measure and in our common belief in him who became man, who gives himself to us as bread, once more trusting each other, opening up to each other, and together letting ourselves be led by him.
The procession, which from an early period was a part of the stational worship in Rome, certainly did acquire a new dimension, a new depth, in Corpus Christi. For the Corpus Christi procession is no longer just walking to the Lord, to the eucharistic celebration; it is walking with the Lord; it is itself an element of eucharistic celebration, one dimension of the eucharistic event. The Lord who has become our bread is thus showing us the way, is in fact our way, as he leads us. In this fashion the Church offered a new interpretation of the Exodus story, of Israel's wandering in the wilderness, about which we heard in the reading. Israel travels through the wilderness. And it is able to find a path in the pathless wilderness, because the Lord is leading it in the guise of cloud and of light. It can live in the pathless and lifeless wilderness because man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And so in this story of Israel's journey through the wilderness the underlying meaning of all human history is revealed. This Israel was able to find a country and was able to survive after the loss of that country because it did not live from bread alone, but found in the Word the strength to live on through all the pathless and homeless wilderness of the centuries. And this is thus an enduring sign set up for us all. Man finds his way only if he will let himself be led by him who is Word and bread in one.
Only in walking with the Lord can we endure the peregrinations of our history. Thus Corpus Christi expounds the meaning of our whole life, of the whole history of the world: marching toward the promised land, a march that can keep on in the right direction only if we are walking with him who came among us as bread and Word. Today we know better than earlier ages that indeed the whole life of this world and the history of mankind is in movement, an incessant transformation, and moving onward. The word progress has acquired an almost magical ring. Yet we know, at the same time, that progress can be a meaningful term only if we know where we want to go. Mere movement in itself is not progress. It can just as well represent a rapid descent into the abyss. So if there is to be progress, we must ask how to measure it and what we are aiming at, certainly not merely an increase in material production. Corpus Christi expounds the meaning of history. It offers the measure, for our wandering through this world, of Jesus Christ, who became man, the eucharistic Lord who shows us the way. Not every problem, of course, is solved thereby. That just is not the way God goes about things. He gives us our freedom and our capacities so that we can make efforts, discover things, and struggle with things. But the basic yardstick has been laid down. And whenever we look to him as the measure and the goal of our path, then a criterion has been given that makes it possible to distinguish the right path from the wrong: walking with the Lord, as the sign and as the duty of this day.
And finally there is kneeling before the Lord: adoration. Because he himself is present in the Eucharist, adoration has always been an essential part of it. Even if it was not developed in this form of a great feast until the Middle Ages, nonetheless it is not a change or a form of decadence; it is nothing essentially different, but merely the complete emergence of what was already there. For if the Lord gives himself to us, then receiving him can only mean to bow before him, to glorify him, to adore him. And even today it is not contrary to the dignity and freedom and status of man to bow his knee, to be obedient to him, to worship him and glorify him. For if we deny him, so as not to have to adore him, then what remains is merely the eternal necessity of physical material. Then we are truly bereft of freedom, a mere speck of dust that is flung around among the mill wheels of the universe and that vainly tries to persuade itself of having freedom. Only if he is the Creator is freedom the basis of all things; only then can we be free. And when our freedom bows before him, it is not abrogated but is at that moment truly accepted and rendered definitive.
But today there is one additional thing. The One whom we adore—as I was saying—is not some distant power. He has himself knelt down before us to wash our feet. And that gives to our adoration the quality of being unforced, adoration in joy and in hope, because we are bowing down before him who himself bowed down, because we bow down to enter into a love that does not make slaves of us but transforms us. So let us ask the Lord that he may grant us to understand this and to rejoice in it and that this understanding and this joy may spread out from this day far and wide into our country and our everyday life.
The book, God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life , may be purchased at Amazon.com.
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