O God, who in a
wonderful Sacrament hast left unto us a memorial of thy Passion:
Grant us, we beseech thee, so to venerate the sacred mysteries of
thy Body and Blood, that we may ever perceive within ourselves the
fruits of thy redemption; who livest and reignest world without
end. Amen.
MANY years ago, when I
first began spending weekends in London, on Sundays I
attended a small and dark red-brick church so close to the
railway tracks that you could hear and feel the rumble of the
trains as they passed by.
It is testament to the
diversity of the Church of England that this church used languages
other than English in its worship; and it was there, at the regular
Sunday-evening eucharistic service, immersed in simple
worship-chants, that I learned this prayer in a language other than
my own. I have treasured it ever since.
Attributed to St Thomas
Aquinas, the prayer is the collect for the feast of Corpus Christi
- instituted in the Western Church by Pope Urban IV in 1264 - and
was taken up by Common Worship as the collect at the
eucharist on the Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy
Communion (Corpus Christi), which is something more of a mouthful
than the modern Roman title for the festival, The Body and Blood of
Christ. It is a prayer of past, present, and future; and
particularly of our past, present, and future - in and with
God.
First, the prayer reminds
us that in the institution of the eucharist we have been left a
sacrament instituted by Jesus Christ himself; one that calls to
mind the saving work of Calvary, and, as Aquinas writes in his
Disputed Questions on Truth, "crowns all the other
sacraments". We are called, as Fr Hugh Allan OPraem said recently
in a sermon, "to hold high the Blessed Sacrament above all the
misery and errors of the world".
Second, it asks God in
the here and now to enable us to worship him on earth - the nuances
of Aquinas's original "veneratio" hint at reverence,
respect, and honour - as we wait for the day when these "sacred
mysteries" will be fully revealed.
Third, the prayer asks
for us always to be reminded in the eucharist of the process by
which Christ has won us for himself: that our human flesh has been
sanctified by his incarnation, and has been raised into heaven with
him by his ascension to his Father. It seeks the gift of grace to
continue our journey, more perfectly aware that we dare not amble
aimlessly through life, but rather, with St Paul, run as if to win
the prize (1 Corinthians 9.24).
Inevitably, such a rich
and thought-provoking prayer can hardly be restricted to public use
once a year on a summer's Thursday, when the festival of Corpus
Christi falls. It could be used in private devotions while
preparing for a celebration of the eucharist, after having received
holy communion, or as an act of thanksgiving after the service. It
could also be prayed by communicants at home: either in the morning
on a day when they intend to receive holy communion, or at night on
a day when they have done so.
It could illuminate the
whole eucharistic experience of those preparing to receive
communion for the first time, and seal that of those receiving it
for the last time. Our place has been prepared; and this "wonderful
Sacrament" is our food for the journey.
Dr Ben Stephens is a freelance writer and
theologian.