Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Cycle C (2025)

In 1264, Pope Urban IV instituted this solemnity for the Universal Church, as a statement of our belief in the True Presence of Jesus in Eucharist. Jesus himself said: “My flesh is true food and my blood, true drink…unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you do not have life within you” (John 6: 53-55). From the earliest times, the Christian people have believed it. Before there was a Bible, Christians gathered to celebrate the Eucharist.

In the 1200’s, there was a Belgian nun, Juliana of Liege, who through her deep experiences in prayer, received a calling to create a specific liturgical celebration that formally celebrates our belief in the True Presence. She shared this strong desire with Pope Urban IV, but it would not be until sometime later that he would act upon it.

What happened is that a priest from Prague by the name of Peter, decided to make a pilgrimage to Rome in 1263 to pray at the tomb of his namesake, St. Peter. Along the way he stopped at a little church in the Italian town of Bolsena, roughly 70 miles north of Rome. He asked permission to celebrate Mass at a chapel there.

Father Peter had struggled with doubts about Jesus’s True Presence in the Eucharist, and so before he celebrated the Mass he prayed for faith to believe. Then as he celebrated the Mass, he raised the host, as he said the words of consecration. The host began to bleed profusely, onto his hands, onto the altar cloths. He nervously wrapped the host in the corporal, and uncertain of what exactly to do, he left the altar, as blood continued to drip onto the altar steps and floor.

Father Peter left the chapel and proceeded to the neighboring town of Orvieto, about 12 miles away, because residing there at that time was Pope Urban IV. Peter confessed his sin of unbelief, then described what happened. Pope Urban sent a delegation back to Bolsena. What he saw in the evidence was enough to compel him to at last, act on Sister Julian’s request.

In 1264 he issued a statement established this solemnity, Corpus Christi, and asked a Dominican friar to compose prayers and hymns to be used for such a glorious feast. We know him as St. Thomas Aquinas, and from his pen came the beautiful hymns, still sung today: Tantum Ergo, Adoro te Devote, O Salutaris and the Pange Lingua.

When Thomas, brilliant as he was, struggled with an intellectual issue, he would place himself before the tabernacle, and even rest his head on it, pleading for wisdom. Near the end of his life, he wrote a treatise on the Eucharist. Not believing that he had done it justice, he laid the pages he had written at the foot of the cross of Jesus and began to pray. He heard a voice say, “You have written well of me, Thomas, what would you desire in return?” Thomas replied, “Non nisi Te” (“Nothing but you.”).

From this altar, we see before us, held aloft, the Pearl of Great Price. To those without regard or belief in it, it seems insignificant. But as St. Paul once said, and is true of us who believe, “We live as having nothing (in other words, just a wafer of bread), yet everything is ours” (2 Cor 6:10). And that everything—the God who created the cosmos, the mountains, our parents, our children, as an act of love—makes Himself vulnerable and allows Himself to be placed on our tongues, in our hands, in an act so intimate. Let us pray that we might be conscious of what we receive; that like Fr. Peter of Prague, we might at least desire to believe in this mystery; to have hearts disposed to receive it; so that ultimately, we might be overcome by it and possessed by it.