The Joy of the Corpus Christi Procession
Today, at my family's beloved parish of St. Agnes, we had a lovely Corpus Christi procession, after Fr. Mark Pavlak's first Mass, set to Mozart's Mass in C Major. Today, on the streets of St. Paul, our God walked among us, radiant in His beauty, arrayed for love and battles. What joy there is in a Eucharistic procession, to walk in the ranks of Our Lord, to follow behind Him as a member of His army with my fellow soldiers, singing his praises, or to walk before Him as my eldest daughter did, sprinkling rose petals before His Sacred Feet. What unity with all Christendom, past, present, and future, I felt, walking as a foot soldier in that marvelous pilgrimage. I can put my feelings no better than Dom Gueranger did, in his Liturgical Year, quoting Fr. Faber at length:
"But to us Catholics, faithful adorers of the Sacrament of love, Oh! the joy of the immense glory the Church is sending up to God this hour! verily as if the world was all unfallen still...How many glorious processions, with the sun upon their banners, are now wending their way round the squares of mighty cities, through the flower-strewn streets of Christian villages, through the antique cloisters of the glorious cathedral, or through the grounds of the devout seminary, where the various colors of the faces, and the different languages of the people are only so many fresh tokens of the unity of that faith, which they are all exultingly processing in the single voice of the magnificent ritual of Rome! Upon how many altars of various architecture, amid sweet flowers and starry lights, amid clouds of humble incense, and the tumult of thrilling song, before thousands of prostrate worshippers, is the blessed Sacrament raised for exposition, or taken down for benediction! And how many blessed acts of faith and love, of triumph and of reparation, do not each of these things surely represent! The world over, the summer air is filled with the voice of song. The gardens are shorn of their fairest blossoms, to be flung beneath the feet of the Sacramental God...All the millions of souls that belong to the royal family and spiritual lineage of St. Peter are to-day engaged more or less with the blessed Sacrament: so that the whole Church militant is thrilling with glad emotion, like the tremulous rocking of the mighty sea. Sin seems forgotten; tears even are of rapture rather than of penance. It is like the soul's first day in heaven; or as if earth itself were passing into heaven, as it well might do, for sheer joy of the blessed Sacrament."
"But to us Catholics, faithful adorers of the Sacrament of love, Oh! the joy of the immense glory the Church is sending up to God this hour! verily as if the world was all unfallen still...How many glorious processions, with the sun upon their banners, are now wending their way round the squares of mighty cities, through the flower-strewn streets of Christian villages, through the antique cloisters of the glorious cathedral, or through the grounds of the devout seminary, where the various colors of the faces, and the different languages of the people are only so many fresh tokens of the unity of that faith, which they are all exultingly processing in the single voice of the magnificent ritual of Rome! Upon how many altars of various architecture, amid sweet flowers and starry lights, amid clouds of humble incense, and the tumult of thrilling song, before thousands of prostrate worshippers, is the blessed Sacrament raised for exposition, or taken down for benediction! And how many blessed acts of faith and love, of triumph and of reparation, do not each of these things surely represent! The world over, the summer air is filled with the voice of song. The gardens are shorn of their fairest blossoms, to be flung beneath the feet of the Sacramental God...All the millions of souls that belong to the royal family and spiritual lineage of St. Peter are to-day engaged more or less with the blessed Sacrament: so that the whole Church militant is thrilling with glad emotion, like the tremulous rocking of the mighty sea. Sin seems forgotten; tears even are of rapture rather than of penance. It is like the soul's first day in heaven; or as if earth itself were passing into heaven, as it well might do, for sheer joy of the blessed Sacrament."
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