From Our Pastor: Corpus Christi
This weekend is Corpus Christi. I hope you participate in the Eucharist procession. And I hope you join us in July for the National Eucharistic Congress in Indy and the Procession coming right through Quincy! I want you to read the sequence for this feast day. It’s beautiful.
1. Sing forth, O Zion, sweetly sing
The praises of thy Shepherd-King,
In hymns and canticles divine;
Dare all thou canst, thou hast no song Worthy his praises to prolong,
So far surpassing powers like thine.
2. Today no theme of common praise Forms the sweet burden of thy lays — The living, life-dispensing food — That food which at the sacred board Unto the brethren twelve our Lord His parting legacy bestowed.
3. Then be the anthem clear and strong, Thy fullest note, thy sweetest song,
The very music of the breast:
For now shines forth the day sublime That brings remembrance of the time When Jesus first his table blessed.
4. Within our new King’s banquet-hall They meet to keep the festival
That closed the ancient paschal rite: The old is by the new replaced;
The substance hath the shadow chased; And rising day dispels the night.
5. Christ willed what he himself had done Should be renewed while time should run In memory of his parting hour:
Thus, tutored in his school divine
We consecrate the bread and wine And lo — a Host of saving power.
6. This faith to Christian men is given — Bread is made flesh by words from heaven: Into his blood the wine is turned:
What thought baffles nature’s powers
Of sense and sight? This faith of ours Proves more than nature e’er discerned.
7. Concealed beneath the two-fold sign, Meet symbols of the gifts divine,
There lie the mysteries adored:
The living body is our food;
Our drink the ever-precious blood; In each, one undivided Lord.
8. Not he that eateth it divides
The sacred food, which whole abides Unbroken still, nor knows decay;
Be one, or be a thousand fed,
They eat alike that living bread
Which, still received, ne’er wastes away.
9. The good, the guilty share therein, With sure increase of grace or sin, The ghostly life, or ghostly death: Death to the guilty; to the good Immortal life. See how one food Man’s joy or woe accomplisheth.
10. We break the Sacrament; but hold
And firm thy faith shall keep its hold;
Deem not the whole doth more enfold
Than in the fractured part resides:
Deem not that Christ doth broken lie;
‘Tis but the sign that meets the eye;
The hidden deep reality In all its fullness still abides.
11. *Behold the bread of angels, sent For pilgrims in their banishment,
The bread for God’s true children meant, That may not unto dogs be given:
Oft in the olden types foreshowed; In Isaac on the altar bowed,
And in the ancient paschal food, And in the manna sent from heaven.
12. *Come then, good shepherd, bread divine, Still show to us thy mercy sign;
Oh, feed us still, still keep us thine;
So may we see thy glories shine
In fields of immortality;
13. *O thou, the wisest, mightiest, best, Our present food, our future rest, Come, make us each thy chosen guest, Co-heirs of thine, and comrades blest With saints whose dwelling is with thee.
- Rev. Steven Arisman