Every Mass is Corpus Christi

(An excerpt of the Most Reverend Romulo G. Valles D.D. During Corpus Christi Sunday and Sending Forth of the IIREF Graduates at San Pedro Cathedral Parish, June 22, 2025.)

Every Mass, either Sunday, Monday or Tuesday, it is always Corpus Christi. It is always a Feast of this Body and Blood, every Mass. As in many cases, the purpose of this Corpus Christi is to tell us is merely to underline what is always present every Mass that we celebrate. Tomorrow, there is Mass, but today is to shake us because the Solemnity of this mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ is simply the host and wine, the bread and wine changing really, real Body and Blood of Christ.

In the Youtube now it is said that this is symbol. But in the Catholic faith is a no, no, no. The bread and wine becomes, the priest, taking on the person of Christ, “agere in persona Christi”, he pronounces the word, and by the way is present tense in the text, of what Jesus said in the last supper, the first Eucharist. It is a very important truth and reality of our religion, of our Church of our Catholic faith, that one of our Church Fathers said, “There is no Church without this Corpus Christi, and there is no Eucharist, no Corpus Christi without the Church.”

If there is Church, if there is God’s people in true faith we cannot but come together and celebrate the mystery of our redemption, the giving, only Son giving of His body and blood to save us. And when we have the Eucharist, we cannot help but celebrate with God’s people, because the Eucharist really does not stand for itself and by itself. It always denotes embracing us. It is for us that we have the Body and Blood of Christ which is first, meaning food for us, food for our spirits, food for our soul. So, it is very central to us. That is why it is one Sunday given to it to wake us up.