'The men simply stood silently and reverently round the little improvised altar of ammunition boxes.' Sunday Reflections, Corpus Christi, Year B

 

Supper at Emmaus

Caravaggio [Web Gallery of Art]

Corpus Christi, Year B

The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Year B 

In most countries, including the Vatican, this solemnity, formerly celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, is now celebrated on the Sunday after Trinity Sunday, this year replacing the Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Mark 14:12-16, 22-26 (English Standard Version, Anglicised)

And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to Jesus, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him,  and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.” And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

British Army Trench, First World War

The Somme, France, July 1916

Photo by Ernest Brooks [Wikipedia]

Alfred O'Rahilly in his Father William Doyle SJ, a biography of an Irish Jesuit who served as a chaplain in the British army in the First World War and who was killed on 16-17 August 1917, writes on page 474 about a Mass celebrated in the trenches. Normally he was not allowed to have Mass with the men there because of the danger. 

On February 2nd [1917], however, he was able to offer the Holy Sacrifice in the trenches , his chapel being a dug-out capable of holding ten or a dozen. 'But my congregation numbered forty-six,' he says, 'the vacant space was small. How they all managed to squeeze in I cannot say. There was no question of kneeling down; the men simply stood silently and reverently round the little improvised altar of ammunition boxes, "glad," as one of them quaintly expressed it, "to have a say in it." Surely our Lord must have been glad also, for every one of the forty-six received Holy Communion, and went back to his post happy at heart and strengthened to face the hardships of these days and nights of cold.' What a difference the Real Presence made in the ministrations of a Catholic chaplain!

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, No 1374 states: The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend." In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained." "This presence is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be 'real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present."

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, popularly known by the Latin name Corpus Christi, celebrates this reality, the same reality that Fr Willie Doyle and the 46 soldiers celebrated in the trenches in Flanders, Belgium, on that cold Candlemas Day in 1917.

Sancti venite (Come all ye holy)

This is said to be the Church's oldest eucharistic hymn, composed in the seventh century in Bangor Abbey in what is now Northern Ireland, from which St Columban had left for mainland Europe in the previous century. It later found its way to the abbey in Bobbio in northern Italy, founded by St Columban and where he died in 615.

A legend from An Leabhar Breac, a mediaeval Irish document, says that the hymn was first sung by angels in St Seachnaill's Church (Domhnach Seachnaill), anglicised as 'Dunshaughlin', a town that is a twelve-minute drive from where I live in St Columban's, Dalgan Park, on the way into Dublin.

Here is the first stanza sung in the original Latin and then in English. Both videos are from Corpus Christi Watershed.

Extraordinary Form of the Mass

Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) 

Second Sunday after Pentecost 

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 6-6-2021 if necessary).

Epistle: 1 John 3:13-18.  Gospel: Luke 14:16-24.

 

Authentic Beauty

Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond.

Pope Benedict XVI meeting with artists in the Sistine Chapel, 21 November 2009.

Roses of Picardy

Music by Haydn Wood, lyrics by Fred E. Weatherly

Singer: Thomas Hampson, pianist: Armen Guzelimian

This song was written in 1916, in the middle of the Great War, later to be known as World War One. The lyricist, Fred E. Weatherly, also wrote the words to Danny Boy. Picardy is a region in France that includes the battlegrounds of the Somme Offensive that began on 1 July 1916 and ended in November. A million men were killed or wounded.

Countless young wives of every social background lost their husbands, many young children lost their fathers, countless young women lost their fiancés and sweethearts in this awful conflict. Fr Willie Doyle wrote in letters to his father about two newly-wed soldiers killed in the war.

13 January 1917. I found the dying lad, he was not much more, so tightly jammed into a corner of the trench it was almost impossible to get him out. Both legs were smashed, one in two or three places, so his chances of life were small as there were other injuries as well. What a harrowing picture that scene would have made. A splendid young soldier, married only a month they told me, lying there pale and motionless in the mud and water with the life crushed out of him by a cruel shell.

10 August 2017. In the afternoon, while going my rounds, I was forced to take shelter in the dug-out of a young officer belonging to another regiment. He was a Catholic from Dublin, and had been married just a month. Was this a chance visit, or did God send me there to prepare him for death, for I had not long left the spot when a shell burst and killed him? I carried his body out next day and buried him in a shell hole, nad once again blessed that protecting hand which had shielded me from his fate.

Father Doyle himself was killed by a shell a week later on the night of 16-17 August.

Those extracts from his letters, originally published in Alfred O'Rahilly's biography, appear in To Raise the Fallen, published for the centennial of Fr Willie Doyle's death in 2017. Compiler-editor Patrick Kenny blogs about Father Doyle at Remembering Fr Willie Doyle SJ.