The Feast of Corpus Christi in Rome
The celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi each year draws many faithful from the Diocese of Rome but also pilgrims from all over the world. Several groups participate in the procession: the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, confraternities, children who have made their First Communion…. This tradition, in Rome, goes back to Pope Nicholas V in the fifteenth century. It was resumed by John Paul II in 1979 after it had been discontinued for more than a century. This year the Cardinal Vicar of the Diocese of Rome, Agostino Vallini, had invited all the faithful to participate in great numbers in the procession “at a time when the See of Peter is the object of serious and unjust insinuations that disorient the faithful,” alluding to the trouble with leaked documents that is roiling the Vatican.
On Tuesday evening, June 7, Mass was celebrated by Benedict XVI in front of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome, followed by the procession along the via Merulana to the Basilica of Saint Mary Major. In his homily, the pope regretted that in the recent past the mystery of the Eucharist has been the object of incomplete perspectives. In particular he insisted on the meaning of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, which, in his opinion, had been diminished by a one-sided interpretation of the Second Vatican Council that assigned a privileged place to the liturgical assembly. “The correct accentuation of the celebration of the Eucharist has been to the detriment of adoration as an act of faith and prayer addressed to the Lord Jesus, really present in the Sacrament of the Altar.” The Holy Father recalled that the correct equilibrium must be established between adoration and celebration, because this disequilibrium has had repercussions on the spiritual life of the faithful, who do not see as clearly the meaning of the constant presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, among us and with us. Celebration and adoration must not be set in opposition as though they were in competition. Communion and contemplation are complementary.
With respect to the sacred character of the Eucharist, Benedict XVI deplored the influence of the secularization inherited from the Sixties and Seventies of the twentieth century. The new worship brought by Christ always has need of signs and rituals, he insisted. Moreover, the disappearance of sacred ritual impoverishes culture and leaves the field wide open to many substitutes that are present in the consumer society: secular rites and signs that can become idols. (Source : Radio Vatican – DICI no.257 dated June 22, 2012)
