CORPUS CHRISTI SEQUENCE

Zion praise your saviour praise your leader and shepherd in hymns and canticles. Praise His as much as you can, for He is beyond all praising and you will never be able to praise Him as He merits. But today a theme worthy of particular praise is put before us the living and lifegiving bread that, without any doubt was giving to the twelve at table during the Holy supper. Therefore let our praise be full and resounding and our souls rejoicing full of delight and beauty, for this is the festival day to commemorate the first institution, of this table. At this table of the new king. The new laws new pasch put an end to the old pasch. The new desplaces the old reality the shadow and light the darkness. Christ wanted what He did at the supper to be repeated in His memory. And so we, in accordance with His holy directions consecrate bread and wine to be salvations victim. Christ's followers know by faith that bread is changed into His flesh and wine in to His blood. Man cannot understand this, cannot perceive it; but a lively faith affirms that the change which is outside the natural course of things takes place. Under the different species, which are now signs only and not their own reality there lie hid wonderful realities. His body is our food, His blood our And yet Christ remains entire under each species. The communicant recieves the complete Christ, uncut, unbroken and undivided whether one receive or a thousand, the one receives as much as the thousand. Nor is Christ dim'nished by being received. The food and the wicked alike receive Him but with the unlike destiny of life or death. To the wicked it is death, but life to the good.