The Corpus Christi Procession Blessing

Toledo, Spain

[The Corpus Christi procession is related to the "rogation" processions.]

[With the four altars of the rogation procession]...[t]he world...is declared to be the realm of God's creative word; matter is subordinated to the power of his Spirit. For matter too is his creation and hence the sphere of his gracious power. Ultimately we receive the very bread of the earth from his hands. How beautifully the new eucharistic bread is thus related to our daily bread! The eucharistic bread imparts its blessing to the daily bread, and each loaf of the latter silently points to him who wished to be the bread of us all. So the liturgy opens out into everyday life, into our earthly life and cares; it goes beyond the church precincts because it actually embraces heaven and earth, present and future.

How we need this sign!

Liturgy is not the private hobby of a particular group; it is about the bond which holds heaven and earth together, it is about the human race and the entire created world.

In the Corpus Christi procession, faith's link with the earth, with the whole of reality, is represented "in bodily form", by the act of walking, of treading the ground, our ground...[W]e carry the Lord himself, the Creator, over the ground--the Lord who willed to give himself in the grain of the wheat and the fruit of the vine...

[T]he rogation procession and the procession with the Most Blessed Sacrament which developed out of the liturgy of Holy Week...come together on Corpus Christi in a single solemn profession of faith in the world-embracing power of Jesus Christ's redeeming love.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Feast of Faith, San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987, 134-135.