Dare to Do as Much as You Can

My favorite line ("Quantum potes, tantum aude") from Thomas Aquinas' sequence Lauda Sion, composed for the Feast of Corpus Christi. Celebrated more in some areas than others, this feast escaped my notice until I was nineteen. I had just arrived in Toledo, Spain, and wherever I walked there were colored caponies overhead and white petals in the gutters. Watch Orvieto's procession here, the city to first celebrate it before it became a universal feast in the Catholic Church. What you won't see in this video is the preceding night's festivities. When I was there, it consisted in relay races by children from the four neighborhoods. They raced in the dark around the cathedral, led by the headlights of motorinos. Very cool Italian teenagers rode the motorinos. And all the parents watched, cheered, and drank wine on the steps of the great Cathedral. It was like Pieper says: "Whenever anyone reaches out and touches the core of all reality, that person can be said to be having a good time."

Here is a 15th-century English Carol for the Feast of Corpus Christi. The carol like the feast (to borrow some words from Douglas Gray) is good at "vividly combining homeliness and mystery."

And by a chapell as y Came,
Met y whyhte Ihesu to chyrcheward gone
Petur and Pawle, Thomas & Ihon,
And hys desyplys Euery-chone.
Mery hyt ys in may morning
Mery ways for to gonne.

Sente Thomas the Bellys gane ryng,
And sent Collas the mas gane syng,
Sente Ihon toke that swete offerying,
And By a chapel as y Came.
Mery hyt ys in may morning
Mery ways for to gonne.

Owre lorde offeryd whate he wolde,
A challes alle of ryche rede gollde;
Owre lady, the crowne off hyr mowlde,
The sone owte off hyr Bosome schone.
Mery hyt ys in may morning
Mery ways for to gonne.

Sente Iorge that ys owre lady knyghte,
He tende the taperys fayre & Bryte—
To myn yghe a semley syghte,
And By a chapel as y Came.
Mery hyt ys in may morning
Mary ways for to gonne.

From Greene, Early English Carols, no. 323; quoted in Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400-1580 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1992), 129-130.

"The feast of the Blessed Sacrament was established in 1246 by Bishop Robert de Thorte of Liege at the suggestion of St. Juliana of Mont Carvillon. [It was] extended to the universal Church by Pope Urban in 1264. The office composed by St. Thomas Aquinas and customary procession was approved by Popes Martin V and Eugene IV. Celebrated in June, the first Sunday after the feast of the Trinity." (Modern Catholic Dictionary, by John A. Hardon, S.J.)