The Feast of the Blessed Sacrament

To understand

On this day, the proclamation of the Gospel is preceded by the singing of the sequence. Originally, the sequence, from the Latin sequentia (next), was a prose piece sung after the Alleluia. The liturgy now offers four sequences throughout the liturgical year: at Easter, at Pentecost, in memory of Our Lady of Sorrows (September 15) and at the Solemnity of the Blessed Sacrament. From now on, they are sung before the Alleluia.

Today’s sequence, Lauda Sion, is twenty-four stanzas long, but it is sometimes abbreviated and only the last four are then sung. Its author would be Saint Thomas Aquinas, to whom in the 13th century we owe the composition of the entire liturgy of Corpus Christi, as it was then called. The feast of the Blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord has its origins in the heart of the Middle Ages, when the faith of the faithful pushed theologians to put words to the great mystery of the Eucharist and to celebrate it with great piety. Today’s sequence is thus a lovely poem that illustrates the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation. It prepares us to communicate with faith and hope.

Meditate

“I am the living bread: if anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. » After the song of the sequence which makes us contemplate the great mystery of the real presence of Christ through the consecrated bread, the words of Jesus in the Gospel teach us the purpose of the Eucharist: to live. Living of Christ; live in Christ; live with Christ. The aim of our faith in the real presence is to commune with Christ, in the strongest sense of the word: to be one with Him now and forever.

The Eucharist places us in a real dynamic. The celebration of this sacrament prompts us to believe and to contemplate, but also to live. Believe, celebrate, live. It is this process that Pope Benedict XVI proposed as the plan of his Sacramentum Caritatis exhortation on the Eucharist in 2007. He presented to the People of God how the Eucharist is first a mystery to be believed, then a mystery to celebrate and, finally, a mystery to live. Let us become aware today of the reality of the Eucharist: it is “the bread of the journey” (sequence), offered by Christ “for the life of the world” (gospel) and so that we may be “transformed into image of what we will be in heaven” (preface). Through this communion with the Body of Christ which is the Eucharist, we build the Body of Christ which is the Church. Indeed, in Him, “we are one body, for we all share in one bread” (2nd reading). Let us pray that this communion realizes in us what it means.

Pray

Here it is, the bread of angels,

he is the bread of the man on the way,

the true bread of the children of God,

that cannot be thrown to the dogs.

In advance it was announced

pair Isaac in sacrifice,

by the immolated paschal lamb,

by the manna of our fathers. O good Shepherd, our true bread,

O Jesus, have mercy on us,

feed us and protect us,

show us the eternal goods

in the land of the living.

You who know everything and who can do everything,

you who on earth feed us,

lead us to the banquet of heaven

and give us your inheritance in the company of the saints.

Amen.

(excerpt from the Lauda Sion sequence)

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