Corpus Christi – The Body Of Christ – Trinidad
[simpleazon-image align=”right” asin=”0809148501″ locale=”us” height=”375″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Y32zhX7bL.jpg” width=”250″]Today the Holy Roman Catholic Church reveals to the world the sacred Body of Christ – Corpus Christi – which Jesus gave to us on the first Holy Thursday. The Church invites us all to adore Him, Jesus, The Christ. There are processions through the streets of our cities as the faithful joyfully, but reverently adore Him who loves us so much that he gave himself to us – not just for us on the cross at Calvary, but to us in the form of the Holy Eucharist. This fulfills His desire to be one with us and we with him. Such is His love for us.
The Lord Jesus Christ, having loved those who were his own to such an extent, loved them to the very end. Realizing that the time had come to leave them and return to his Father, he washed their feet during a meal – the Last Supper – and commanded them to do the same; to love one another. It was then that Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist as the memorial of his death and his resurrection. In so doing, he left them a pledge of his love, so that they never depart from his own, and to make them sharers in his Passover. He commanded his apostles to commemorate it till his return; “thereby they constituted them Priests of the New Testament.” (CCC 1337)
Here in Trinidad and Tobago, the feast of Corpus Christi is a public holiday, and it has become a custom to plant crops on this day. However the attention of believers, who attended today’s celebration in their thousands, was focused on this Sacrament, the source and summit of the Christian life, in which Christ Jesus left himself: His Body, His very Blood, His Soul and His Divinity. The sacrament of the Eucharist is for this reason, the holiest of all realities: “the Blessed Sacrament”. This fact was quite evident as thousands of Catholics processed through the streets of the capital, Port of Spain, gracing the city with the Most Holy Eucharist and with their prayers, their praise, and their adoration of this most sacred feast.
On the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, people go back to that “Thursday” which we call “Holy”, when Christ the Redeemer celebrated his last Passover by having the disciples, at the Last Supper, fulfill the Jewish Passover meal as well as inaugurating the Eucharistic sacrament.
It is for this purpose, for many centuries the Holy Roman Catholic Church has chosen Thursday for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, feast of adoration and deep worship, contemplation as well as exaltation. On the feast of Corpus Christi, the People of God lure close to the most precious gift – the priceless treasure – left by Christ Jesus, as a public demonstration of their faith and belief in the Body Of Christ, the Holy Eucharist.
