THE FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI
The Feast of Corpus Christi in
the Church of England's calendar falls on the
Thursday after Trinity Sunday – a movable
feast depending on the date of Easter. The
words are Latin, and mean ‘the body of
Christ’, and the longer name for the feast is
‘day of thanksgiving for the institution of
Holy Communion'. It
is only relatively recently that the day has
featured in the calendar of the Church of
England, and
it is celebrated almost exclusively by
Anglican churches of a ‘High Church’ flavour, although
marked by great festivity and colourful
processions in Roman Catholic countries.
At St Faith’s in recent years, a
feature of our celebrations at the High Mass
of Corpus Christi has been the blessing of the
eucharistic ministers of St Faith’s and St
Mary’s for their work in sharing the sacred
elements of the eucharist with our
congregations. Our pictures show this very
special ritual as carried out on Corpus
Christi day, 2013 – May 30th, as members of
the team were blessed and greeted.
After the service,
more conventional wine (and a cool glass
of Pimm's No.1!)
was enjoyed at a celebratory party at the
back of church.
Corpus
Christi - Signs and Symbols
The pictorial symbolism of Corpus Christi
is interesting, especially the
representation of the pelican. The bird is
shown in stylised form with its beak to
its breast, often with blood dripping from
a chest wound, which is seen falling into
the mouths of its nesting young. As
such it is taken as symbolising Christ’s
sacrificial blood in the eucharist
nourishing the people of His Church.
The image was well known in
mediaeval times, and is portrayed in
bestiaries with the heraldic title of 'the
pelican in her piety' or 'a pelican
vulning (wounding) itself. It
features more than once in Shakespeare’s
plays, notably in King Lear when
the old monarch castigates his ungrateful
children as ‘pelican daughters’ – feeding
off their parents and draining their life
blood and in Hamlet in the phrase
'the kind, life-giving pelican'.
There are several possible explanations
for this belief. One lies in the behaviour
of the mother bird plucking its breast
feathers to line its nest, and exposing a
raw patch, mistaken for blood. Another
refers to a diseased patch sometimes found
on pelicans’ breasts; yet another that it
arises from the pelican’s actions in
pressing its beak to its pouch to extract
stored food for its young. The most
extreme version of the legend has the
pelican killing its young then, after
three days, bringing them back to life
with its blood: the parallel with Christ’s
death, resurrection and the sacrifice of
the eucharist is obvious.
Both the editor's old Oxford
college of Corpus Christi (whose crest is
reproduced below between two other
symbolic representations) and its
Cambridge namesake have the pelican as
their symbol - and there is a public house
near Bridgend in South Wales intriguingly
entitled 'the pelican in her piety'. The
pelican is the symbol of the Irish Blood
Transfusion Service!
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