In the 13th Century a Norbertine nun named Juliana had a recurring dream in which a full moon appeared with a dark line on it. In time Jesus explained to her that the moon represented the Church with its liturgical calendar and the line represented a feast that was missing in the Church’s annual celebrations. There was no feast in honor of His Most Holy Body and Blood.
In time, after many difficulties and her death, one of her early supporters became Pope Urban IV. He instituted a new feast in honor of the Most Blessed Sacrament and commissioned St. Thomas Aquinas to compose hymns that are sung to this day—O Salutaris Hostia and Tantum Ergo.
St. Thomas said that when approaching the Holy Eucharist we can trust only one of our five senses. What looks, tastes, feels, and smells like wine and a wafer of wheat is no longer that. We can only trust our sense of hearing and what we hear at Mass are the words of Jesus spoken by the priest or bishop who says, “This is My Body. This is My Blood.” These are words that Jesus Himself spoke at the Last Supper. He didn’t say “This is a Symbol of My Body and Blood,” but “This is My Body. This is My Blood.” We must take Jesus at His word and believe what He said then and continues to say through His ordained servants. The celebration of Corpus Christi or the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ reminds us every year of the transformation that occurs at every Mass.
But the transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is not the only transformation. The bread and wine are changed so that we who receive the Body and Blood of Christ will be changed as well. Speaking to over a million young people gathered for World Youth Day in a field outside of Cologne, Germany in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI said: “Bread and wine become His Body and Blood. But it must not stop there; on the contrary, the process of transformation must now gather momentum. The Body and Blood of Christ are given to us so that we ourselves will be transformed in our turn. We are to become the Body of Christ, His own Flesh and Blood.”
Just as the Eucharist is not a symbol of the Body and Blood of Christ, neither are we. We are truly the Body of Christ, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “His own Flesh and Blood.”