St Andrew's Celebrates the Feast of Corpus Christi!
The feast of Corpus Christi ("the Body of Christ")
celebrates the sacrament which is the center of Catholic worship, the Holy
Eucharist. That sacrament was instituted by Jesus of Nazareth at his
"Last Supper" with his disciples on the night before his
crucifixion. The Eucharist was celebrated from the earliest days of the
Church, but in the thirteenth century there was a movement in the Catholic
Church of the West for the establishment of a particular feast day in honor
of the Eucharist. Pope Urban IV ordered the observance of such a feast in
1264, and in the following century it became universal in the Western
Church. For six hundred years that feast was observed on the
Thursday after Trinity Sunday, but in 1970 the new Roman Missal, while
retaining that day for some countries, provided that in others the feast be
observed on the Sunday after Trinity. The latter is the case in the United
States.
St. Andrew's Church in Philadelphia celebrates the
Feast with a procession around the block including stops at four altars.
This year's feast was blessed with excellent weather and good attendance. More...