In some countries not only is the feast celebrated in mass but they also parade the streets with the consecrated wafer as a public show that the sacrifice of Christ was for the salvation of the whole world.
The Church of England celebrate the feast on the same day but is know as the Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion. It is basically a celebration of the fact that the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is present in the bread and wine during the Eucharist — a re-enactment of the Last Supper, the final meal that Jesus Christ shared with his disciples.
In the city of Ponta Delgada, in the Azores, the people make a flower-petal carpet almost three quarters of a mile in length. A procession of high-ranking clergy and red-robed priests who are followed by a group of first communicants those who will receive communion for the first time , pass over this carpet.
In Germany Corpus Christi is celebrated with colorful processions where the sacrament and other holy symbols are carried throughout the villages.
Small-town streets are decorated with flowers and greenery. Children dressed in white wear wreaths of flowers and accompany women in regional costume and local clergy.
Sometimes people display pictures of Jesus Christ and spread carpets in front of their houses to honor the day. Some processions, for example in the region of Bavaria, are held on lakes rather than on the streets, with flower-decked boats carrying members of the procession and worshippers across the waters.
In Switzerland this festival is usually observed with elaborate processions of clergy in their best robes, people in regional costumes, and soldiers in historic uniforms. Coloured Sawdust. This holiday happens on Tuesdays every year. It celebrates the Eucharist. People usually decorate the streets with colored carpets. In Rio de Janeiro flowers from the cerrado and sawdust are used to create colorful carpets. Before that there had been no universal festival to mark the sacrament of the Eucharist.
In , the Council of Trent described the festival as a 'triumph over heresy'. They meant by this that when Christians celebrated the festival they affirmed their belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation, and thus the victory of the Church over those heretics who denied that the consecrated wafer became the real body of Christ during the Mass.
The festival took an additional meaning in Spain, since it was always attended by the secular rulers of the area. This symbolised the unity of the sacred and secular powers, and linked both in victory over outsiders. The Spanish Corpus Christi festival explicitly linked the state's political and military victories with divine triumphs; divine will and royal will were inextricably intertwined. Because the "defence" of Catholic Christianity legitimised offensive or "conquest" activity, the triumph of the Corpus Christi was understood as the triumph of those who celebrated Corpus Christi.
Many Spanish celebrations of this feast featured choreographed performances that were militaristic in nature. Dancers often appeared as combatants: angels and demons, Samson and the Philistines, and Christians and Moors are just a few of the warring factions presented in Spanish Corpus Christi festivals.
By extension, the community of Christians participating in local ritual triumphs enlisted in this global war against non-papists. Carolyn Dean makes a further interesting point about the Spanish celebration of Corpus Christi as acting out Spain's colonial successes:. Thus, the conquest of the so-called New World was integrated into a known pattern of historic confrontations with non-Christian peoples. Although Native Americans were not represented in human form as subjugated to the Body of Christ in early Spanish Corpus Christi celebrations, the wealth of their land was transformed into its supports.
We might well read a metonymic "transubstantiation" of the bodies of American natives, not yet well known, into the gold which, when fashioned into monstrances and crosses, summoned their subjected and doubly converted presence in Spanish Corpus Christi festivals. The festival has a particular resonance for Spain and Portugal, and countries in Latin America.
In Seville the festival was known as 'the Thursday that shines greater than the sun'.
0コメント