A divine panacea

The feast of Corpus Christi, which we celebrate today right after the winding up of the Easter season and resuming the so-called 'Ordinary Time' of the Sunday liturgy, is of relatively recent origin. It originated with the visions of a St Juliana, who lived in the 12th century. It started then being celebrated as a local feast, but was soon extended to the whole Church by Pope Urban IV in 1264.

It was primarily a processional feast and the Eucharist was carried through the streets of the town or village, accompanied by traditional rit-uals involving music and dance. It was a classical example of liturgy 'from below', as each culture painted the festival in different hues.

A number of fruitful themes emerge from this feast. The image of a procession of ordinary people following the enshrined Host, often carrying symbols of their trade or craft, recalls our procession through life and reminds us that the Eucharist is the spiritual food for our ordinary journeys of life.

These journeys mix the joys of resurrection with the sorrows of our human condition. The Eucharist we receive is never simply a meal or an object of adoration, but a memorial of a life given for others and the seed of the immortality which the Lord himself has promised us as Christians. It can also become our spiritual 'elixir', a divine 'panacea', an effective remedy against all the spiritual calamities which beset us along our way to salvation.

With us the term most commonly used as Christians is 'Holy Communion', referring to our participation in the Eucharistic Sacrifice or, as it is generally called, the Holy Mass. Our participation in the Mass is, of course, not complete and therefore not entirely fruitful without the reception of the consecrated Host, which we call Holy Communion. It brings to mind the guest who accepts the invitation to a reception, without however sharing the meal that is being kindly offered by the hosts.

The Eucharist, furthermore, is also an effective sign of our union with each other, of all the faithful among themselves, of all those who through Baptism make up the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.

The Eucharist, therefore, is the most effective sign of unity among all the believers in Christ. All of us as Christians, including members of other denominations or Churches, have been struggling for centuries in our efforts to overcome the elements of division still existing among us, in order to achieve at last complete unity with each other, that kind of unity willed by Christ and for which Christ has prayed and died.

As we unfortunately know, however, such a realisation is bound to remain not much more than a dream until we can all pave the way for a common reception of the Eucharist, which is both the means and the sign of that unity.

It is this kind of unity that is willed by Christ and for which He has prayed to the Father: "That they all be one, as You and I are one." Here it is good to bring to mind the aim of the Ecumenical Movement, which was given such a strong impulse by Blessed John XXIII and by Vatican II. The aim is not uniformity, but unity in diversity, a diversity which already exists in all Eastern Churches, including those in full union with the Catholic Church.

The Eucharist is thus the sacrament of our fellowship in the divine nature. A classical illustration of this is that drawn by St Cyril of Alexandria, who compared our union with Christ in the Eucharist to two pieces of wax, which are melted together to become one, without however losing their own spiritual identity.