The Christian nostalgia for the feast of corpus Christ

On the 6th June 2010, Christians all over the world celebrate the feast day of Corpus Christi; which is the Latin appellation of Body of Christ. Most of us do still cherish our childhood memory of this beautiful feast, with the fascinating flower images along the path where we make long liturgical procession singing on the top of our voice in the open. For the very young believers it is still fun; as they provide for flowers to do the drawings on the ground, and during the ceremony when their parents drag them by hand showing them the right intervals they should land their feet in, in order not to offend the pious drawings on the ground. As we learn later on, on our journey of faith, this feast has nothing to do with fun for the grown up faithful. It means much more than the good flower images on the ground. It honors the Eucharist, which we Christians hold to be the actual body and blood of Christ, and we prefer to call it the ‘Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ’; in order to give it the respect it deserves. This feast is marked by a long and impressive procession after the sacrifice of mass. The procession is arranged differently in different regions according to people’s custom. Essentially it is a Eucharistic procession with a solemn blessing at the end. On this year’s feast of Corpus Christi, the Church has chosen for us a beautiful biblical text for our meditation which is Lk 9, 11- 17. It helps us to understand the deep meaning of the feast that we celebrate. The text tells us of a crowd of people who were following Jesus and how they got what they had come for. He taught them about the kingdom. He healed those who did not feel well. And at the hour when all were feeling hungry, he fed them all to their hunger, with five loaves of bread and two fishes though they were more than five thousand men. In our procession we sing in meditation that Jesus is the same to the present moment. We are still drawn to follow him and he kindly receives us. Through his word, he instructs us in the things of God. With faith he still heals our diseases and miraculously he feeds us physically and spiritually. And that is what the whole liturgy of Corpus Christi is telling us: follow him, and he will receive, instruct, heal, feed, and save you. When all is done and said on the above feast, we must acknowledge the problem that it may pose in the mind of our contemporary man as we enter the postmodern period. The main theme of the feast is a call by Jesus to follow him. How can we follow him today? During his time he called people to follow him and they did in their way, and that is why they were called the followers of Jesus. Today many people do believe in Jesus. They sincerely worship and adore him, praise his name, invite him into their hearts and accept him as their Lord and Savior. Many do believe ‘in’ him but fewer are willing to follow him. For the most part, believing “in” Jesus really believes “about” Jesus; that Jesus is divine, that he died for our sins, that he will come again to judge humanity and to establish his kingdom. And that is the problem with our faith today that one can conceivably believe that Jesus is the Son of God and yet still live a self-centered life, ignore the cries of the poor, and demonstrate hatred toward other people due to their differences. With that kind of faith mentioned above we should hear the voice of Jesus in our procession asking us “Why do you call me `Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?” Jesus once asked. (Luke 6:46) Many people basing themselves on this and similar verses do criticize us Christians. The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard with some exaggeration in order to make his point, called the typical Christian response “admiring Christ instead of following Christ.” The issue before us is whether we want to move from being admirers, and even worshippers, to being followers. If we want to take that step then the question is “What does it really mean to be a follower of Jesus today?” And the answer must be from each individual’s situation. Ends