You will recognize the hymns today - we sing often enough at Sunday morning Masses, and at the monthly Benediction on First Fridays. We sang some of them with a quiet and tender joy on Maundy Thursday, but sang them then, that night, conscious of the descending darkness of that awesome approach of the Passion of our Lord--his betrayal, death, and burial. Today we return to the same adoration and thanksgiving, but we have come out from under the shadows, we are released from the ambiguity of Lent and Holy Week. Today is a bright, joyful morning of unmixed joy, a festival of splendor as we share and adore the most holy Sacrament, partake and venerate the Body of Christ. The historical roots of the Feast of Corpus Christi lie in just this appreciation - the Church's sensitivity to the need for a feast adoring the Presence of our Lord in the mass, without any misgivings, without the pensive surroundings of Maundy Thursday and the onrushing Passion of Good Friday. Corpus Christi is a type of Maundy Thursday, with all of the glory but without the pain of that night; the joy of the gift of the Sacrament, without the looming sense of betrayal and death outside the room, just beyond the door. Maundy Thursday, may be, after all, more realistic, more characteristic of the mixed nature of life itself, but Corpus is one of those fleeting and so deeply appreciated moments in our lives, one of those supremely rare moments when we can celebrate the benefits of love and not worry about the cost of it. We wouldn't have this feast without Maundy Thursday, of course, that's in the background and we don't deny it. It was on Maundy Thursday that Christ himself give us the gift of the Mass. But it was 13 centuries later that a follower of Christ gave us this Feast celebrating Christ's original gift. The establishment of this Feast dedicated to the celebration and adoration of the Sacrament, pure and simple, rather than dedicated to its actual historical institution, which is the Maundy Thursday consideration, was the result of a lifetime of labor and devotion by a Belgian nun, Juliana of Liege. Born in a village near Liege, she was orphaned as an infant, and placed in a convent also near Liege, and raised there. In 1230, having grown into a mature and extraordinarily capable woman, she was made Superior of the convent which had raised her. Accepting her as an orphaned infant, and then accepting this brilliantly resolute and fiercely determined woman as Superior evidently were different things. She encountered severe resistance and outright opposition and was finally forced out of the convent. Driven out, she sought refuge in Liege, alone and unprotected, an adult, but still on orphan, and so without any family connections or protection. She was befriended by a very young priest of Liege, and was able to survive her disgrace. This young priest interceded for her with the bishop of Liege. The young priest had the love and compassion, but the Bishop had power. He secured her restoration at the convent and reinstated her as Superior. But that young priest of Liege did more than champion Juliana's physical safety and successful reinstatement. He prospered what was far more important to her. Her passionate and all-consuming vision of glory and her understanding of God's purpose for her life, the point of her being, was to establish a Feast Day celebrating, and adoring, the Sacrament of the Body of Christ. Through that young priest's faithful and courageous championing of Juliana's vision, the Bishop of Liege proclaimed Corpus Christi as a Feast of his local diocese. He died that same year, and the Feast was not observed again, never repeated in Juliana's lifetime. Juliana was later again exiled from her convent, driven out, but the young priest of Liege was gone and the bishop was dead, and she spent the last years of that immensely devoted life as a recluse, rejected and outcast from the Church, and with the dream of a Feast celebrating the Holy Eucharist just a single distant memory of an unfulfilled, passionate hope, realized and experienced only for one single day, and then no more. Later in the century, long after her death, Pope Urban IV proclaimed the Feast of Corpus Christi and established it as annual festival of the entire world-wide Church. This brilliant and forceful pope, the most powerful cleric in Christendom at the time, had once, as it happened, been a young priest in Liege, where he had, in his youth, once defended a despised and rejected woman. In 1264 he made the observance of Corpus Christi universal throughout the catholic Church. Touching. And remarkable. But what purpose does such a Feast serve in 2007? Is it just a fond and nostalgic link to a glorious catholic past, a relic of our heritage, or is it possibly a daringly up-to-date challenge - summoning us to look closely at our relationship to God, to his Church, and to the Sacraments of his Church? Yes, such a Feast as this can be abused. It can be touched with corruption and tinged with superstition. Those hostile to such a Feast will smile or frown at Processions with the Blessed Sacrament as we will do at the end of this Mass. Is that an appropriate, a devout, thing to do--an OK thing to do? Corpus Christi will not let you finesse this one. We are face to face with these considerations in a Feast like this. What do we think about the Sacrament? That is a decision each of us must make in our private prayers with God. There are no perfect answers, and this isn't a setup from the pulpit for a theological test of catholic correctness. It really is a simple, genuine question--what do you believe about the Sacraments of the Church? Corpus Christi asks you to answer that. I believe it is the Body of Christ. It believe that it is the Sacramental Presence of Christ, the way fashioned by God so that the infinite can be present in the finite, and the eternal present in the temporal. I hope, one day, at the conclusion of my mortality, to worship Christ face to face, to love him and adore him in his presence, a presence no longer Sacramentally mediated. Until then I have his presence here, genuine, authentic, or as the Episcopal Church puts it so simply: Real. So I think it's OK to genuflect to what appears to be mere bread, to lift it up, carry it forward, sing hymns of praise and offer adoration. You must too, or you wouldn't be here. Corpus Christi allows us, encourages us, enables us to make a huge statement about how seriously we take sacraments, our utter conviction that in the Sacraments of the Church, Christ is truly present. Stop worrying about whether or not you understand and really appreciate what is going on. Christ is present and he's doing it. So it must be all right. Stop worrying about whether or not you are truly forgiven, even though you still feel guilty and shamed. Christ himself has offered the absolution. You are absolved - period. Stop worrying about whether you are fit and ready and suitable for Christ to come into your life. He makes that decision and he takes that action. Sacraments let you sit back and say everything is in the hands of someone who can handle it - who knows what to do, who never fails and never errs and never comes up short. I can at last relax, and trust, and live a simple, sincere, sacramental life, simply sitting back, and letting go of the fussing and the fretting, and let him take care of me, let him do it for me, which his how he wants it, and how I need it to be. We need to know, we need to be reassured, about the real, objective presence of our Lord in the Sacrament. Corpus Christi does that. Corpus Christi reminds us that our Lord's presence does not end with Mass, he is not dismissed when we are dismissed at the conclusion of Mass, he does not leave this place when we leave this place. His presence in the Reserved Sacrament is not somehow less real, actual, genuine, than his presence in the very celebration of the Mass. His presence endures, abides, and is above all ready--ready and waiting for us in any time of need. This is the point and purpose of each and every eucharistic devotion conducted outside of, or in addition to, each communicating Mass: Benediction, Holy Hour, Adoration, Processions with the Blessed Sacrament, all remind us, teach us, assure us, convince us of his continuing Real Presence in the Sacramental body, in the consecrated Bread. All the splendor and glory of each mass, with all its trappings, and our embellishments, enjoyable as they are, are no match, as nothing is, for the meager bit of bread which is Jesus Christ our Lord. Today is a day unlike another in the power and the directness of its voice saying: "This is real, the sacramental system works, and is the real thing. If this were bread and only bread you would never be able to get away with what you are doing today. Today says, by its very existence, this is not bread, this is not wine, this is Christ. So let us forever adore the most holy Sacrament, the Real Presence, the Body of Christ--Corpus Christi.