The blessed sacrament, the centre of immutable truth : a sermon

Abstract

We are closing a great Festival ; I do not mean today alone, but these eight days of joy in all the world. The Octave of Corpus Christi ends here indeed with a fitting and proportionate solemnity - the enthroning of Jesus for the first time in this beautiful and majestic Sanctuary. We end it, therefore, with a double joy. But in all these eight days past there has been a festival of gladness throughout the Catholic unity. From sunrise to sunset there has been a stir of joy and of triumph in all the Church of God. As in the great Easter solemnities, when the mighty Basilica of S. Peter is arrayed in the splendours of illumination, a light springs of a sudden from the summit of the Cross, and flows down in streams, kindling in a moment the whole outline of the structure in the majesty and amplitude of its glory; so the other day, when the Vicar of Jesus Christ bore in his hands the Eucharistical Presence of the Word Incarnate with more than bridal and royal procession, he set the whole Church in motion, and everywhere the same procession of the Bridegroom and of the King came forth in every land... [Excerpt]