A blessed Feast of Corpus Christi to you!
“O taste, and see,” says the Psalmist, “that the Lord is sweet!” Our sweet Lord, the great Lover of our souls, has deigned to feed us with His own Flesh and Blood, that we may abide in Him, and He in us. This most wonderful Sacrament, “the living and life-giving Bread which came down from Heaven,” is the sustenance of our supernatural life in this world, and a pledge of our future resurrection to eternal life with God.
“O Sacrament most holy! O Sacrament divine! All praise and all thanksgiving be every moment Thine!”
Sermon of St. Thomas Aquinas for the Feast of Corpus Christi
The Body that He took from us He gave wholly for our salvation, for He offered His own Body to God the Father upon the altar of the Cross as a Victim for our reconciliation, and He shed His own Blood both to redeem and cleanse us, that we, being bought back from a wretched slavery, might be washed from all our sins. And then, that the memory of such a great benefit might abide in us, He left His Body to be our food and His Blood to be our drink, that the faithful might receive them under the species of bread and wine.
O precious and wonderful banquet, health-giving and full of all sweetness! What could be more precious than this banquet, in which no longer as under the law the flesh of calves and goats is eaten, but Christ the true God is set before us that we may receive Him? What could be more wonderful than this Sacrament, in which bread and wine are substantially changed into the Body and Blood of Christ? And therefore Christ, perfect God and man is contained under the appearance of a little bread and wine. He is eaten by the faithful but not torn asunder; indeed when the Sacrament is divided He remains entire in each particle. The accidents subsist without a subject, that there may be room for faith, when we receive visibly that which is invisible and hidden under an appearance not its own. Thus the senses are kept free from deception, for they judge of accidents known to them.
Of all the sacraments none is more health-giving, for by it sins are washed away, virtues are increased, and the soul is fed with an abundance of all spiritual gifts. It is offered in the Church for the living and the dead, that all may profit by that which was instituted for the salvation of all. Finally, no words suffice to describe the sweetness of this Sacrament, in which spiritual delights are tasted at their very source and the exceeding charity of Christ in His Passion is called to mind. It was in order to impress more deeply upon the minds of the faithful the boundless extent of His charity that, when He had kept the Pasch with His disciples and was about to depart out of this world to His Father, Christ instituted this Sacrament as a perpetual memorial of His Passion, the fulfillment of the ancient figures, the greatest of all His miracles.