Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart of Jesus

On the feast of Corpus Christi we celebrate and give thanks for the institution of the Holy Eucharist, the sacrament of the altar. The feast came from the visions of Augustinian nun Santa Juliana of the diocese of Luttich. The visions were investigated by the Luttich archdeacon who in 1264, upon becoming Pope Urban IV extended the feast to the whole church.

In 1274, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote the special mass and the Divine Office for the feast. The Sacred Heart of Jesus fiesta goes back to revelations in 1675 to Santa Margarita Maria Alacoque where the Lord told her “I ask you that on the first Friday following the octave of Corpus Christi, a feast honoring my heart to be celebrated.”

The Church made a long critical study of these revelations. In 1697, Santa Margarita Maria’s congregation, the Visitation Nuns, was allowed to celebrate this feast, but with the mass of the five sacred wounds. In 1856 Pope Pius IX prescribed the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the universal church.