The Feast of Corpus Christi

The bells are ringing all over the town.

It's a big Catholic holiday today. There will be a procession, with the local priest leading a throng of believers, or non-believers, whichever they may be.

It is the “Feast of Corpus Christi”, the Celebration of “The Body of Jesus Christ.”

Today's Festival celebrates the Meal which Jesus hosted for his disciples and during which he offered some bread and wine with the alleged words: “Take this and eat from it, this is my body.

Offering some wine in a cup he urged his disciples to “drink from this, all of you, for this is my blood.”

It is reasonable to assume that these words were meant allegorically and not literally.

In the year 1215 A.D. Pope Innocent III decided that during Mass, celebrated by a Catholic Priest, “Transubstantiation” takes place, meaning that the wafer of bread actually and substantially changes into the body of Christ and that the Wine actually and substantially becomes the Blood of Jesus Christ.

Just to be on the safe side, the Catholics further insist that, although the “Essence” of the waver changes into the body of Christ, taste, looks and smell do not change, but remain the same as before.

(That is probably the reason why Luther's Protestants believe that only part of the waver changes into the body of Christ, while the other part remains the waver.)

Neither Innocent 3^rd, nor any other Pope or Priest after Innocent considered this consuming of Flesh and Blood of a human being as Cannibalism.

I think I was in Third Grade of Public School, I was some 8 years old, when the Priest, who taught Religion, told us not to bite the Waver, since this would hurt Jesus, but to let it slowly dissolve against the roof of our mouth, so as not to inflict pain on Jesus Christ.

Even as an 8 year old I had serious doubts as to the truth of this warning, and I wondered then why this man lied to us, when just the other day he told us that to tell a Lie was a deadly sin and you would burn for it, either in Purgatory or in Hell, whichever the circumstances might dictate.

The Catholic Hierarchy seems always to have been hooked on “Hokus Pocus – Abara Cadabra” seemingly in the hope that common folk would be more impressed by this than by the simple truth.

If Christ had been reported just to have said to his dinner guests: Here is some bread and some wine, and each time you partake of either, think of me and of what I have taught you, it would have been less astonishing than the 'bag of magic tricks' the RCC unpacked and still unpacks.

Truly, the more I think about this the weirder it gets.

Bertstravels

shakes his old head in wonder.