In the wake of Ascension Thursday and Pentecost (and its Octave in the traditional calendar of the Latin Church), we celebrate Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi on the following Thursday (often transferred to Sunday) and Sacred Heart on Friday of the next week.
All these feasts deserve great attention and circumstance, for they deepen our grasp and love of great saving mysteries. Speaking of Corpus Christi, let’s see part of a reflection by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in his Feast of Faith:
The solemnity of Corpus Christi is not … in contrast with the primacy of receiving, which finds its expression in the offering of bread and wine. Rather, it merely but completely highlights what receiving someone really means: it means giving the Lord the type of reception due a victor. Receiving Him means adoring Him; receiving Him means, then, “Quantum potes, tantum aude”: dare all you can.
The Council of Trent concludes its exposition on Corpus Christi with a proposition that sounds offensive to our ecumenical ears … But if we purge these formulations of 16th-century passions, something positive and great comes surprisingly to light … In the conciliar text we read that Corpus Christi must represent the triumph of truth “to the extent that, in the face of such splendour and such exulting on the part of the whole Church, its adversaries … are either totally confused or they become wise again in the end, moved as they are by shame.”
If we remove this text from the polemics, it means that the force with which the truth advances must be the joy with which it manifests itself. Unity is not asserted with polemics or even with academic theories but with the irradiation of the Easter joy; it leads to the core of the profession of faith: “Christ has risen”. It leads to the core of human existence which awaits this joy with every fibre of its being.
So the Easter joy is characterised as the essential element of ecumenical and missionary spirit; because of it Christians should contend with each other, and because of it make themselves known in the world. Corpus Christi exists for this reason. And this is the most profound meaning of the couplet: “Quantum potes, tantum aude”; exploit all the splendour of beauty if it is a question of expressing the joy of all joys. Love is stronger than death; in Jesus Christ, God is among us.
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