Piety Hill Musings

The ramblings of the Rector of St. John's Episcopal Church of Detroit. Piety Hill refers to the old name for our neighborhood. The neighborhood has changed a great deal in the over 160 years we have been on this corner (but not our traditional biblical theology) and it is now known for the neighboring theatres, the professional baseball and football stadiums and new hockey/basketball arena.

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Location: Detroit, Michigan, United States

Sunday, June 14, 2020

Adoremus in aeternum Sanctissimum Sacramentum - Rector's Rambling for June 14, 2020


Today the Church celebrates a feast day that is a copy of one that falls during Holy Week, and gets lost in the shuffle.
In all the busyness of Holy Week, with the concentration beginning on Palm Sunday about Jesus’ Crucifixion, on Thursday the Church has a special celebration of the institution of the Sacrament of the Holy Communion.
The night before Our Lord’s death, he met with his apostles to celebrate the Passover meal, as all the people of the Jews did.  Keeping the ancient practice of remembering the night when the angel of death passed over the first born of the people of the original covenant in order to convince Pharaoh to release them, Jesus takes the unleavened bread, and the cup of wine, and changes that “remembrance meal” into something even more meaningful and life-giving!
That last night Jesus gave himself under the species of bread and wine, which would become his own Body and Blood, an absolute assurance of Grace.  It is this that the Church continues to celebrate every time the priest stands at the altar to confect the Sacrament using our Lord’s own words, and the invocation of the Holy Spirit.
On the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, as well as the following Sunday, the Church celebrates with great solemnity this wonderful gift that gets lost in all the other activity of Holy Week.  On the Feast of Corpus Christi we can focus on the wonder of this remarkable gift to us of Himself.
In 1989, I attended a most memorable service of Corpus Christi, at St. Clement’s Church in Philadelphia.  Memorable not only because it was my first one, but primarily because of the absolute beauty and reverence shown to Jesus in the Sacrament!  Music, liturgy, and over the top ceremony made a lasting impression that carries on to this day.
Corona precautions prevent us from celebrating this grand occasion together today, but Jesus will still be worshipped and adored in the great gift of the Blessed Sacrament.  Adoremus in aeternum Sanctissimum Sacramentum [Let us adore forever the Most Holy Sacrament].


posted by StJohnsPriest | 9:56 AM