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Don’t be perplexed by the additional “studying” you heard earlier than the Alleluia this Sunday. In truth, it wasn’t a studying in any respect. It was a Sequence: a particular hymn occurring on solely 4 Sundays through the liturgical yr, one in all which is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (the others being Easter Sunday, Pentecost, and Our Lady of Sorrows).
Saint Thomas Aquinas was commissioned by Pope Urban IV to jot down the Lauda Sion because the Sequence for Corpus Christi. The ultimate stanzas of the hymn, starting with the way more generally identified Ecce panis Angelorum (“Lo! The angel’s meals is given”), represent the “shorter type” within the present Lectionary, but the longer type accommodates a easy however sensible catechesis about what the Eucharist is, in the beginning.
Lauda Sion Salvatórem
Lauda ducem et pastórem
In hymnis and cánticis
“Zion, reward your Savior! Praise your king and shepherd with songs and hymns!”
Yes, the Eucharist is the memorial of Christ’s ardour and dying. Yes, it’s actually His Body and Blood. Yes, it’s heavenly meals. But, because the Sequence reminds us, the Eucharist is, in the beginning, reward!
The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists thanks and reward as major to our understanding of the Eucharist (cf. CCC 1358). The Holy Eucharist is par excellence an expression of gratitude for God’s creation during which the Church praises him for every little thing good, stunning, and proper on the planet (cf. CCC 1359). The Sequence additionally makes clear that no reward is sufficient, for God is bigger than any reward we are able to supply. Yet reward is exactly what we’re created for, so we can not assist however supply it. Saint Augustine writes firstly of the Confessions that man needs to reward God (cf. 1.1.1.), and there’s no higher approach to reward him than the Eucharist.
The very phrase signifies thanksgiving. In Greek, eucharistein (cf. Lk 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24) and eulogein (cf. Mt 26:26; Mk. 14:22) hark again to historic Jewish blessings mostly stated throughout a meal during which the individuals proclaimed God’s works of creation, redemption, and sanctification (cf. CCC 1328). To undertake the fitting perspective within the Eucharist, nonetheless, we should acknowledge that the last word expression of thanks it expresses can be not possible if not for Christ (cf. CCC 1361). Any try to grasp the Mass primarily as a human initiative or motion falls miserably brief.
Those lucky sufficient to have heard the longer model of the Sequence on Sunday had a beautiful alternative to reexamine their major motive for going to Mass. Is it to meet a Sunday obligation? To hear a sermon? To see associates? Any of those are superb so long as they’re secondary, for the Eucharist is in the beginning a sacrifice of reward via which the Church sings God’s glory on behalf of all creation, and she or he is simply in a position to take action as a result of Christ has joined us to Himself (cf. CCC 1361).
Only after this superb invitation to reward does that Sequence clarify why the invitation is extra-special on the feast of Corpus Christi. Namely, we recall that the “residing” and “very important” bread we obtain was initially given to the Twelve within the Upper Room or “Cenacle.” Anyone blessed sufficient to have visited this conventional web site of Jesus’s Last Supper is aware of how easy, earthy, and tactile that Passover should have been. And but, it unalterably remodeled the world and made all issues new. In a poetically wealthy stanza of the Sequence, we sing:
Vetustátem nóvitas
Umbram fugat veritas
Noctem lux elíminat.
“Truth dispels shadow, the brand new the previous, gentle blots out the evening.”
Recite the stanza aloud and spot how the “previous” is signified with the extra rounded “u” sound in umbram (shadow) and vetustatem (oldness), and the “new” with the brighter “a” sound in novitas (newness) and veritas (reality). For no matter traces of the normal Jewish Passover stay (and they’re certainly necessary), Jesus, celebrating the Last Supper with His Apostles inside that very context, provides it its definitive that means: i.e., Jesus’s personal “passing over” to the Father via His dying and resurrection. He is the Paschal Lamb. The Last Supper each prefigures and celebrates His ardour, dying, and resurrection, fulfilling the Jewish Pasch and prefiguring the Church’s ultimate Pasch within the glory of God’s kingdom (cf. CCC 1340).
The Sequence dedicates traces to describing additional the form of reward wanted for this sacrament:
Sit laus plena, sit sonóra
Sit jucúnda, sit decóra
Mentis jubilátio.
“Let your reward be full, let or not it’s loud, let or not it’s pleasing, let the shouting of your thoughts be becoming.”
I’ve translated these traces actually and opted to have decora (becoming) modify iubilatio (actually a “shouting”), although it’s not totally clear which adjectives modify laus (reward) and which iubilatio. (I’m inclined to suppose they modify each.) Whatever the case, the Sequence clearly doesn’t need us to take reward flippantly. Praising is severe enterprise! So severe, the truth is, that the Sequence, in three consecutive stanzas, warns towards permitting an improper disposition of coronary heart and thoughts to show what must be a supply of grace right into a supply of condemnation:
Sumit unus, sumunt mille:
Quantum isti, tantum ille:
Nec sumptus consúmitur.
Sumunt boni, sumunt mali:
Sorte tamen inæquáli,
Vitæ vel intéritus.
Mors est malis, vita bonis:
Vide paris sumptiónis
Quam sit dispar éxitus.
“One partakes, a thousand partake; nonetheless a lot the thousand, so the one. Nor is Jesus, having been partaken, consumed. Both the great and dangerous partake, however with completely different outcomes, for the previous obtain life, the latter dying; dying to the evil, life to the great. See what a distinct end result the identical partaking has for every!”
There’s no use in attempting to sugarcoat these verses. If you had been lucky sufficient to listen to them, I think about it was tough to chop via archaic and convoluted English of the present Lectionary. Be that as it might, rejoice! You can not discover a higher purpose to go to Confession! Allow the Lord to forgive your sins, heal your soul, ease your conscience, and put together you once more subsequent week for a celebration higher than you’ll be able to ever think about.
Lauda, Sion!
Photo by Jacob Bentzinger on Unsplash
