Ver­non Khelawan

"It is in­valu­able to con­verse with Christ and lean­ing against Je­sus' breast like his beloved dis­ci­ple, we can feel the in­fi­nite love of His heart. We learn to know more deeply the One who gave Him­self to­tal­ly in the dif­fer­ent mys­ter­ies of His di­vine and hu­man life, so that we may be­come dis­ci­ples and in turn en­ter in­to this great act of giv­ing for the glo­ry of God and the sal­va­tion of the world.

"Through ado­ra­tion, the Chris­t­ian mys­te­ri­ous­ly con­tributes to the rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion of the world and to the sow­ing of the gospel. Any­one who prays to the Sav­iour draws the whole world with him and rais­es it to God. Those who stand be­fore the Lord are there­fore ful­fill­ing an em­i­nent ser­vice. They are pre­sent­ing to Christ all those who do not know Him or are far from Him; they keep watch in His pres­ence on their be­half."

From Our Holy Fa­ther, Pope John Paul II's 1996 let­ter to the Bish­op of Liege, writ­ten on the oc­ca­sion of the 750th an­niver­sary of the first cel­e­bra­tion of the Feast of Cor­pus Christi.The ques­tion which might be both­er­ing read­ers would be why a let­ter to the Bish­op of Liege? Liege is a city in Bel­gium where the peo­ple there cel­e­brat­ed the Feast of Cor­pus Christi for the first time in 1246. So for al­most 800 years the Ro­man Catholic Church has been cel­e­brat­ing this feast on the Thurs­day af­ter Trin­i­ty Sun­day.

It is a pub­lic ex­hi­bi­tion of faith when Chris­tians, es­pe­cial­ly Catholics all over the world em­brace the cel­e­bra­tion, which in most coun­tries, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, the con­se­crat­ed host, in a mon­strance, held aloft and pa­rad­ed through the streets in pro­ces­sion.

This year, as last year, the route for the lo­cal pro­ces­sion has been changed be­cause of the on­go­ing restora­tion works at the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion. It will be­gin at the Grand Stand in the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah fol­low­ing holy mass at 8.30 am, and end­ing out­side the closed cathe­dral.

There will be three bene­dic­tion stops along the way–out­side the Rosary Church on Char­lotte Street; out­side the Sa­cred Heart Church on Rich­mond Street and fi­nal­ly out­side the main en­trance to the cathe­dral.

In years gone by young girls, dressed in white would take turns at rev­er­ent­ly of­fer­ing flower petals from their small bas­kets to the Blessed Sacra­ment in the mon­strance. Over time, how­ev­er, this rit­u­al has dis­ap­peared. This cus­tom is still main­tained in some Eu­ro­pean dio­ce­ses like the Azores (Por­tu­gal), Switzer­land and Ger­many.

"The Blessed Sacra­ment is in­deed the stim­u­lus for us all, for me as it should be for you, to for­sake all world­ly am­bi­tions. With­out the con­stant pres­ence of our Di­vine Mas­ter up­on the al­tar in my poor chapels, I nev­er could have per­se­vered cast­ing my lot with the lep­ers of Molokai; the fore­seen con­se­quence of which be­gins now to ap­pear on my skin and is felt through­out the body.

Holy Com­mu­nion be­ing the dai­ly bread of a priest, I feel my­self hap­py, well pleased and re­signed in the rather ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances in which it has pleased Di­vine Prov­i­dence to put me."–Blessed Damien, Apos­tle of the Lep­ers.

Ver­non Khelawan is the me­dia re­la­tions of­fi­cer of Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices Ltd (Cam­sel), the of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions arm of the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain. It of­fices are at 13 In­de­pen­dence Square. Tele­phone: 623-7620.