The Four Senses of Corpus Christi

Octave of Corpus Christi

The eight days between Corpus Christi and the Feast of the Sacred Heart — the Octave of Corpus Christi — have a special significance for our monastery. It is during these eight days that we enter into a deeper retreat, letting go of all needless contact with the world to devote ourselves more to the One Thing Necessary, our Eucharistic Lord.

We began the celebration of Corpus Christi on the feast itself, last Thursday. In procession we escorted the Eucharistic King through His monastic domain. We stopped at the altar of our Lourdes Grotto for Benediction, and then proceeded back to our Oratory for the second Benediction. In the evening, after Vespers, we had our third Benediction of the day.

On Sunday we celebrated the external solemnity. Again we went in procession, the faithful following us to the Lourdes Grotto and again to the Oratory. During both processions it rained. Both times the rain began immediately after the first Benediction at the altar of the Lourdes Grotto.

And you, O children of Sion, rejoice, and be joyful in the Lord your God: because He hath given you a teacher of justice, and He will make the early and the latter rain to come down to you as in the beginning. (Joel 2:23)

Corpus Christi and the Exodus from Egypt

Throughout Paschaltide, the Church, the new Israel, relives, we could say, all that Israel went through in her Exodus from Egypt. Easter itself, the Lord’s Death and Resurrection, was our Passover. Through the Blood of the Lamb, we were delivered from slavery. We passed through the Red Sea through our Baptism out into freedom. And Pentecost, at the conclusion of Paschaltide, recalled for us the arrival of Israel at Mount Sinai where the covenant was made, where they received the Law. As the Lord descended upon the mountain in cloud and in fire, so too the Holy Ghost descended in fire upon the Church, giving her the New Law written upon our hearts.

And now, having concluded Paschaltide, Corpus Christi allows us to remember Israel’s crossing over into the Promised Land. “He fed them with the fat of wheat and filled them with honey out of the rock.” So we sang in the Introit. The fat of wheat and the honey from the rock refer to the Promised Land, a land of abundant harvests, a land flowing with milk and honey. The words are taken from Psalm 80, a psalm which gives thanks for Israel’s deliverance from slavery and being led into the promised land, where God says, “Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it.” And so today’s feast points us to our entry into the Promised Land, the Promised Land which we are longing for after this earthly pilgrimage.

The Four Senses of Scripture

The Holy Eucharist, in fact, points us to the past, the present, and the future. It is rather like Sacred Scripture. The Church tells us that there are four senses of Sacred Scripture. We can look at the literal sense, what it’s telling us actually happened. But then the realities of Scripture point also to the allegorical or Christological sense, telling us about the Mystery of Christ, what Our Lord did for us; to the moral sense, which tells us about our life in the present, what we are to do here and now; and the anagogical or eschatological sense, the sense that points us to what is to come, to the glory that we hope for.

Applied to the Eucharist

We can read the different realities of Sacred Scripture on these different levels. And the Holy Eucharist can be seen this way as well. The antiphon sung at the Magnificat at Vespers throughout Corpus Christi points to these four senses.

O Sacred Banquet in which Christ is received. This is the literal sense. This is what is happening. Christ is received.
The memory of His Passion is recalled. This is, if you will, the allegorical sense or Christological sense, telling us what Christ did for us–His Sacrifice on the Cross, which is sacramentally represented and offered in an unbloody manner in the Sacrifice of the Eucharist.
The mind is filled with grace. This is the moral sense, what is happening here and now in our souls through the Eucharist.
And the pledge of future glory is given to us. This is the anagogical sense, the sense that points us on to what is to come.

The Pledge of Future Glory

The Eucharist is the pledge of future glory. In the Eucharist, the glory that we hope for is already a reality in a certain sense. To be sure, the veil is still there. We don’t see God face to face. We are still pilgrims and wayfarers. And so the Eucharist is our manna — food that sustains us on the journey through this life. But It is also a foretaste of the fruits of the Promised Land. In that Promised Land of Heaven, our happiness will consist, as the Postcommunion prayer of Corpus Christi says, in ‘the everlasting enjoyment of Thy divinity’, being united with God face to face, as He is in Himself.

Here in this life, in the Most Holy Eucharist, we don’t see God face to face. We don’t have vision. We still have to rely on faith. But it is truly Our Lord, with His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, Who is present here and Who unites Himself to us. United to Him, we receive the infusion of His divine love, of charity. And that charity is indeed the beginning of eternal life. For while faith will pass away and give place to sight in Heaven, the charity, the union with God through love which we have already in this life, will continue. That same reality will be with us in Heaven. But it is already given to us here in the Most Holy Eucharist.

So as we celebrate this gift of the Most Holy Eucharist today, it is for us a foretaste of what it will be like to enter into the Promised Land. As we go in procession with Our Lord in the monstrance, we are like the Israelites who went in their triumphal procession, their triumphal march into the Promised Land, with the Ark of the Covenant in their midst in which God was present amongst them. Our Lord is even more truly present, with His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, here in the Most Holy Eucharist. And we go in procession with Him throughout this land, looking forward to the day when we will enter definitively into the Promised Land.

This is the source of our hope. It is this which sustains us in our pilgrimage through this valley of tears. It can seem perhaps that life is long, that it’s too hard to try to live according to the Gospel, to keep God’s commandments, keep ourselves free from sin, to live for Him throughout this long journey to Heaven. Heaven can seem very far off, very abstract. So Our Lord gives us this foretaste of Heaven in the Holy Eucharist. If it seems like it’s too hard to avoid sin throughout our life simply because of the seemingly distant hope of Heaven, let us at least strive each day to keep ourselves free from grave sins so that, living in the state of grace, we can approach our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament–the little bit of Heaven which is given to us here and now, to draw us on day by day until we cross the threshold of eternity.

As we celebrate this greatest gift of Our Lord’s love, let us ask Him to help us always to receive It worthily, aware of what is being given to us, aware that this is the beginning, the foretaste here on earth, of eternal life. We ask Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament to help us receive Our Lord with the love with which she did during the years of her exile on this earth–the years when she longed to see the face of her Son Who had ascended, when she would have said in the words of Psalm 72, “What have I in heaven? And apart from Thee, what do I desire upon earth? My flesh and my heart have fainted away, but God is the God of my heart, God is my portion forever.” Our portion here in the Most Holy Eucharist, as He promises to be our portion forever in the heavenly Land of Promise.