The Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord

10 June 2012

Entrance	The heavenly word
Gloria	At the Table of the Lord (Collegeville Composers Group)
Psalm 115	The cup of salvation (mtgf)
Gospel Acclamation	(Murray)
Preparation of Gifts	Whoever eats my flesh (mtgf)
Eucharistic Acclamations	Missal (ICEL)
Lamb of God	At the Table of the Lord (Collegeville Composers Group)
Communion	Take and Eat (Michael Joncas)
Final	Alleluia, sing to Jesus

I have been told that every Catholic knows the hymns that St Thomas Aquinas wrote for Corpus Christi. I am not wholly convinced. What interests me in them is how the last couple of verses, or a short section, get extracted and did become popular—so from The heavenly word comes O salutaris. We sang the JM Neale translation to Rockingham which people did know.

We were unaccompanied but as the refrain of Take and eat was already in the Mass leaflet we used it. The cantors and choir managed well the modulation between verse and refrain. It is worth noting that the feast is now the Body and Blood of Christ and that the texts are balanced, if not weighted towards the Precious Blood — the scriptural images for the Blood of Christ are quite rich. I remember at a Conference on the Eucharist someone asking the speaker if Communion would still have been received under both kinds in the time of St Thomas Aquinas, given that he writes of both, and it was thought where Communion was received it would have been under both kinds - though the practice was dying out.

We had planned something else for the Preparation of Gifts but I had prepared a simple setting of the Communion Antiphon with verses from Psalm 23 which we were also going to sing at Communion but in the circumstances it fitted where it was placed.