Pints With Aquinas - 54: Tell us about the hymns you wrote for Corpus Christi? With Emily Barry

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Pints with Aquinas episode 54. I'm Matt Fradd. If you could sit down with St. Thomas Aquinas over a pint of beer and ask him any one question, what would it be? Today we'll ask St. Thomas to talk to us about the four hymns he composed for the Feast of Corpus Christi. Thank you for joining us yet again here at Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor and discuss theology and philosophy. Glad you're with us. You know, we've got a ton of great content coming up over the next several weeks. I'm really excited about it. We've got some great guests and some great topics for discussion. I want to say thank you to more than a hundred of you who support Pints with Aquinas. And I also want to invite you,

Starting point is 00:01:03 if you don't yet do that, but Pints with Aquinas. And I also want to invite you, if you don't yet do that, but Pints with Aquinas is something maybe you listen to regularly, something that blesses you, I want to invite you to support the show. That can be for as little as $2 a month or $5 a month. The way you would do that

Starting point is 00:01:17 is by going to pintswithaquinas.com, clicking the Patreon banner, and there you can learn about all the different thank you gifts I will give you in return for supporting the show. It would mean a lot. Today we're going to be talking about the Feast of Corpus Christi. When most people think of Thomas Aquinas, they might think of a brain on a stick. They certainly think of him as a gigantic intellectual figure, which he is.

Starting point is 00:01:42 But they may not be familiar with the four hymns that Aquinas wrote for the Feast of Corpus Christi. And so today I'm joined by my friend, Emily, Emily Sullivan, that was her name, now she's married, Emily Barry, otherwise known as the stay-at-home Thomist, about these hymns. They're beautiful and you're going to learn a lot. about these hymns. They're beautiful and you're going to learn a lot. And twice within this interview, we kind of pull away from the interview and I play two of those beautiful hymns. And I think you'll realize that you're more familiar with them than you thought. In the show notes, I will put the text to all of the hymns right there so you can meditate upon them at your leisure. God bless and enjoy the show.

Starting point is 00:02:26 Emily Sullivan, it's great to have you on the show. It's a joy to be here, Matt. Thanks for inviting me. It's good to have you for two reasons. One, we know each other and you're really smart and you love St. Thomas. And two, you're a female. Hooray! There are female Thomas out there. Up until now, I haven't had any, so shame on me. It's great to have you with us. Sure. Let's see. I'm a mom.

Starting point is 00:02:50 I'm married. I have three little ones under five, so that's exciting. I went to Thomas Aquinas College out in California, which is a kind of incredible great books curriculum where you just read through the greatest works of western civilization and discuss these ideas in seminar small seminar classes and there's a special devotion to saint thomas so you're studying latin so you can read the summa in the original language you're doing a lot of the philosophy of aristotle um freshman year just reading through all of sacred scripture so that you're really good with the bible and then sophomore years a lot of the church fathers heavily on saint augustine kind of all in preparation for junior and senior year being able to read St. Thomas Aright.

Starting point is 00:03:31 I started reading St. Thomas when actually when I was in high school. I had been under the impression. I think a lot of Catholics, unfortunately, have been under this impression post-Vatican II in boring religion classes that, you know, if you're smart, the Catholic Church isn't the place for you. You know, like your questions are kind of silly and you should check your intellect at the holy water font. But I was blessed with an incredibly dynamic and intelligent youth minister who took my questions very seriously and kept pointing me to the original sources. So she'd say, oh, you should really read Augustine on that. You should really read St. Thomas on that. And I remember reading in the opening of John Paul's encyclical on faith and reason,

Starting point is 00:04:09 where he really does hold up St. Thomas as kind of this tour de force and, you know, the scholar par excellence for doing faith and reason together. John Paul writes, God has placed within the human heart a desire to know the truth in a word himself. And so when I realized, yeah, this desire to know and to understand, like that's not offensive to God. He put it there so that we would seek to know him more, like the bride in the Song of Songs, like wanting to understand more about the mysteries of the faith, wanting to understand the Trinity, wanting to understand the Eucharist. And St. Thomas is really the perfect guide for that because he was blessed with this incredible intellect, this mind that's just astounding in its breadth and depth,

Starting point is 00:04:51 but also this heart that is so in love with our Lord and our Lady. And so when you put those two things together, this incredible mind, but with also this passionate love for our Lord, like St. Thomas is a mystic. When you come to know that about St. Thomas, he's really the perfect guide for those who seek to understand the faith more, but also seek to desire and desire to grow in holiness. You mentioned that Aquinas was not only a great intellect, but he had a beautiful heart and he was a mystic. And this leads us into today's discussion about St. Thomas Aquinas, who, well, wrote the liturgy for Corpus Christi, but I'll let you tell us a bit about that. So here we go. So Corpus Christi is Latin. In the old days, before the mass was in vernacular,

Starting point is 00:05:39 when the priest offered you the blessed sacrament, he would say Corpus Christi, right? So it means the body of Christ. And the solemnity is usually, in the United States, it's celebrated on the second Sunday after Pentecost. You know, it's just like feast day after feast day. So you have Pentecost, then you have Holy Trinity Sunday, and then you have Corpus Christi. And usually there's a big Eucharistic procession. It's usually really beautiful. Pastors who are really courageous will have this Eucharistic procession all around their town and the neighborhood. And so it actually really started back in the 13th century. There's this saint in Belgium, St. Juliana, and she had this deep devotion to the Blessed Sacrament.

Starting point is 00:06:13 And she had a vision of the church as a moon, but there was this one dark spot. And the spot represented the absence of a feast day in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. So she shares this vision with her local bishop. It becomes a feast day in her local diocese, and eventually the Pope, Pope Urban IV, publishes a bull on September 8th in 1264 declaring this a solemnity for the entire church, this celebration of the body and blood of Christ. And he specifically asked St. Thomas to write the hymns for the Mass and for the divine office.

Starting point is 00:06:47 So for lauds and vespers and matins, the prayers of the church. So St. Thomas writes four hymns in honor of the feast day. The first is the Lauda Zion. The sequence was written for the Mass. It means praise Zion. The second was the Pangea Lingua Gloriosi, which was written for the Mass. It means praise Zion. The second was the Pangea Lingua Gloriosi, which was written for the first Vesper, so the evening prayer on the vigil, the night before Corpus Christi. And then you had the Verbum Supernum, which was for laws, for morning prayer.

Starting point is 00:07:18 And then you had the Sacri Salimis, which was for matins. So St. Thomas, again, at the request of the Pope, writes these beautiful, again, originally in Latin, hymns in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. Tell us a little bit more about the hymns themselves, if you don't mind getting into them. Yeah, sure. So even if you haven't studied Latin or know more Latin than something like Carpe Diem, it's actually really beautiful to look at these hymns in the original language, because if you read them in the Latin, then you get the rhymes and the rhythm, and you see the poetry that's going on here. And again, even if you don't know the words, you see the profound beauty and the simplicity of the language that really befits

Starting point is 00:08:03 the dignity of the truth that St. Thomas is inviting us to contemplate, the dignity of the language that really befits the dignity of the truth that St. Thomas is inviting us to contemplate, the dignity of the Eucharist. So you have these four hymns, and ironically, most people really are very familiar with them. They just don't know it. So when we go to Benediction, for example, we sing the O Salutaris, O Saving Victim. Those are the last two verses of the Verbum Supernum or when we sing the Tantum Ergo Novo ceneri tui Prestet vide supplementum Sensum defectui

Starting point is 00:08:58 Genitori, genitoque, laus et jubilatio, salus honor virtus quoque, sit et beneditio Procedenti agutroque Comparsit laudatio Amen So as we just heard, Amen. and bring it to a place of repose, symbolizing at the end of the Last Supper that Christ is now removed. Now the Paschal Mystery begins. And usually when we process with the Blessed Sacrament to wherever they're going to have exposition for the night, we're singing the Pondi Lingua Gloriosi.

Starting point is 00:10:18 And then lastly, many of us are familiar with the Pondi Sangelicus, right? The Bread of Angels. Pavarotti, for example, is a classic opera singer who sang this. I think we have a little clip here to share with you. Vit manis hominum, Nat manis cenicus, Vivuris terminum, So those are actually the last two verses of the Sacris Solemnis. So again, while you may have never thought about St. Thomas as being this great composer, this great author of hymns,

Starting point is 00:11:26 you're probably already familiar just in the tradition of the church with the hymns that St. Thomas wrote for Corpus Christi, because the church has really taken on St. Thomas's writings for this, in honor of the Blessed Sacrament as her own. So in a similar way to how we talk about St. Thomas as the universal doctor, as the doctor of the Church, the Church has really taken St. Thomas' own language and used that to glorify the Blessed Sacrament. What do you say to those who ask, is there a stark difference between, you know, the St. Thomas who wrote the Summa and this St. Thomas who wrote the Corpus Christi hymns?

Starting point is 00:12:03 humor and this St. Thomas who wrote the Corpus Christi hymns? Yeah, that's a great question. I think that it can be really easy sometimes to write St. Thomas off as kind of this walking brain, like a souped up Aristotle on steroids. You know, you get all the fun of Aristotle, but then you add grace and revelation and he's just this big walking brain. But that, again, I think as we were saying earlier in the show, that really misses out on the whole person of St. Thomas, the St. Thomas who's a saint and who's a mystic. And so the Summa, right, we want to remember the audience for the Summa was written for Dominican novices. So that's presupposing that they've already studied all of sacred scripture, all of the church fathers, and then all of the philosophy of Aristotle. So going into the

Starting point is 00:12:45 Summa sometimes it can be challenging because St. Thomas is using a language and he's relying upon a prior knowledge of, again, sacred theology and the philosophy of Aristotle. So the language he uses sometimes can be intimidating for people when they first come to St. Thomas. But what St. Thomas is doing with the Corpus Christi hymns is they're written for every man. They're written for someone who doesn't really even understand Latin because they're written for anyone who wants to honor and love Jesus in the Eucharist.

Starting point is 00:13:19 But what's really beautiful is there's a complete, how to put it, harmony. I think that's the word. There's a harmony between the way that St. Thomas writes about the Eucharist in the Summa and then how he's writing about the Eucharist in the songs themselves. So if you were to pick up the Summa and say, oh gosh, I've picked up the Tertia Pars and I've looked at question starting at like 73 going to 83, all these questions on the Eucharia Pars and I've looked at question starting at like 73, going to 83, all these questions on the Eucharist. And they're so intimidating. He's using these languages of, well, you have the accidents that remain and the whole idea of transubstantiation,

Starting point is 00:13:55 where the Eucharist is something extraordinary and supernatural. You have this change, this essential change. When the priest says the words of consecration, even though it still looks like bread and tastes like bread and smells like bread, we believe by faith that it's not. We believe that it's truly the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, even though our senses can't tell us that that change has actually occurred. Because again, the appearances remain. But maybe I pick up the Summa and this language seems difficult or too philosophical for me. Well, I can go to a beautiful English translation of the Corpus Christi hymns, and it's almost like a mini catechism on the Eucharist. So it takes all of St. Thomas' teaching

Starting point is 00:14:38 on the Eucharist and makes it into something very simple and very accessible and very beautiful. Eucharist and makes it into something very simple and very accessible and very beautiful. And so you'll see the same themes that St. Thomas is investigating in the Summa Theologiae contained now in the Corpus Christi hymns. I'm told, and you know, there's a lot of stories about St. Thomas. I hope a lot of them are true. And that is that St. Thomas sometimes would have such trouble trying to comprehend the mysteries of God somewhat and would often kneel with his head rested against the tabernacle and just weep. Have you heard this too? Yes. Yes. Isn't that beautiful?

Starting point is 00:15:17 And one of the things, it's so lovely and it so reveals the heart of St. Thomas. One of the things that he'll tell his friend, Brother Reginald, is that he learned more from prayer than through study. And so the Summa Theologiae, again, isn't just the fruit of really hard, assiduous work, you know, reading the church fathers and reading Aristotle. But it really is the fruit of his intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. We mentioned before that St. Thomas is a mystic. And one of the stories about St. Thomas is a mystic, and one of the stories about St. Thomas is that after he finishes writing his tract on the Eucharist, so those questions we were mentioning before in the Tertia Pars, questions basically 73 through 83, he then

Starting point is 00:15:55 brings it to the altar and presents it to our Lord. And St. Thomas, we're told that Jesus from the crucifix speaks to him, comes alive and speaks to him. There's a beautiful painting of this depiction and says, you have written well of me, St. Thomas, what would you have for yourself? And St. Thomas says, only you, only you, Lord. Robert Barron has that as the motto on his shield and the way he has it in Latin. It's nothing if not you, Lord, right? So, it's not like you and nothing else, but nothing if not you. So, if this means I have not you, then I don't want it. Right, right. And so, again, it's really beautiful to kind of look

Starting point is 00:16:39 at the way that St. Thomas investigates the Eucharist in the Summa, kind of in a more formal way, but then to see how there's this total harmony with the themes that he presents when he writes the Corpus Christi hymn. So some of these themes that emerge, I think, are really worth our time. You probably know that the catechism quotes that St. Augustine will say that the New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old Testament is hidden in the old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the new. So you have this idea that there are types in the Old Testament, things that are like hints or glimmers. They're foreshadowing of what's going to happen in the New Testament, where Christ is going to completely reveal what was alluded to or hidden in the old. So he'll encounter, especially in the opening question,

Starting point is 00:17:27 question 73, I think it's article six, he'll talk about the Paschal Lamb and how the Passover Lamb was a type or a foreshadowing of the Lamb of God. And we'll remember with the Passover celebration, right, we have these 10 plagues, and the 10th plague is that the oldest born son is going to be killed, right, when the hand of God comes over Egypt. But the Jewish people, the Israelites, are going to be saved by the blood of the lamb that redeems them, and so God will pass over their house. And the deal with the lamb was there were very specific requirements of preparing the Paschal lamb. It had to be a male. You couldn't break any of its bones. It had to be

Starting point is 00:18:11 spotless without blemish. It had to be innocent. And you had to eat the lamb. It wasn't enough to just spread the blood on the threshold of your house or the doorposts of your house. You had to actually consume it. And so Christ now is the Paschal lamb. And again, with the Eucharist, we have to eat the lamb. And you'll remember in the gospel narratives, we're told that while the other two sinners who are being crucified with Christ, their bones are broken, their legs are shattered so that they die more quickly, they suffocate. Christ's bones aren't broken because you have to fulfill the law. Rather, the soldier pierces his side with a lance and out flows blood

Starting point is 00:18:51 and water. So this idea of the Paschal Lamb is very prominent in the Corpus Christi hymns. Yeah, and right away that brings me to those two scripture passages. The first is when John the Baptist, upon seeing Christ coming for his baptism, says, behold the Lamb of God. And then this Lamb of God in John 6, 53 will say, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Right, exactly. These aren't medieval inventions that Catholics came up with, right? This is very scriptural, what we believe about the Eucharist. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so,

Starting point is 00:19:25 you see, even in the Tantumergo that we listened to before, one of the lines is, or the ancient forms departing, newer rites of grace prevail. So, this is this, again, this theme of having a type in the Old Testament that then is culminated and reaches perfection in the example of Christ. Another example that St. Thomas will use in the Corpus Christi hymns is this idea of manna, the bread of angels, like we saw in the Panis Angelicus. So the Israelites are pilgrims, right? They're wandering the desert for 40 years and they're starving and they're yearning for the flesh pots of Egypt. Why don't we go back? We always had food back in Egypt, right?

Starting point is 00:20:05 And so God provides for them. He gives them this bread from heaven, the bread of angels. And this is the pilgrim's food as they're journeying through the desert. And your listeners probably know when we talk about viaticum, we talk about the Eucharist as it's the bread of pilgrims. So this is a second theme that we see very prominently in the Corpus Christi hymns is this idea that now Christ is the bread of heaven that God offers to us as pilgrims on the journey. We also see when we sing in the O Solitaris, we see this idea of being saved and

Starting point is 00:20:41 being redeemed by Christ himself, that we're people who are in need of redemption. And so it's in the Paschal Mystery and the institution of the Eucharist that our redemption is won. We also see allusions to the sacrifice of Isaac when Abraham is told, you know, to sacrifice his only begot, his only son, the son that he had yearned for and longed for. And then the angel stays his hand. But God offers his son completely, the word made flesh on the cross. And so, again, you're seeing this, how the New Testament is the fulfillment of the old. And so the sacrifice of Isaac is made perfect in God's own sacrifice of his own son. is made perfect in God's own sacrifice of his own son. I think another theme that's very prominent is the doctrine of the real presence that, again, as we were saying before, we see Christ's body,

Starting point is 00:21:33 blood, soul, and divinity under the appearances of bread and wine. And so we see that, again, you've probably talked about before, St. Thomas is this follower of Aristotle. And for Aristotle, our senses are key. Nothing is in the intellect, Aristotle will say, that isn't first in the senses. So anything we know as material beings has to come to us first through our senses. And yet here we have the Eucharist as this profound act of faith because our senses can't tell us what's going on. There is no indication that this miraculous, incredible change has happened at the consecration besides the act of faith. You probably know the prayer of St. Thomas, the Adorate Devote, which is translated by

Starting point is 00:22:21 the great Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins. It's translated, the song is usually Godhead here in poet, Jeremy Hopkins. It's translated. The song is usually God had here in hiding whom I do adore lost in these bare shadows shape and nothing more. One of the verses is seeing, touching, tasting are in the deceived. Our senses can't grasp the Eucharist,

Starting point is 00:22:39 but we, we believe by faith that what God has spoken is the truth. So when Christ says... Let me finish that stanza for you because it goes into what you're saying because I have it right in front of me. What God's Son has told me, take for truth I do. Truth himself speaks truly or there's nothing true. Right, right. So we're believing on faith, Christ's own words at the

Starting point is 00:23:07 consecration. And what he had said before in John that you quoted for us, Matt, where he says, you know, anyone who does not eat my flesh and drink my blood cannot have life within them. And everyone says, this is a hard teaching. Who can believe this, right? And they all go, except for the apostles, right? They all start to leave. And his apostles are kind of incredulous, like, well, everyone's going to leave. Can't you call them back, you know? But he doesn't say, no, no, no, come back. I'm just, I'm speaking metaphorically or no, no, it's just a symbol. He lets them leave.

Starting point is 00:23:39 And so the Eucharist and the command to actually receive His body, blood, soul, and divinity is critical to the faith. And so, St. Thomas really extols that, this mystery of transubstantiation where the accidents remain, but there's been a substantial change. It is no longer bread. It is no longer wine. It is truly God's flesh indeed. It is truly Christ's blood that we are consuming in Holy Communion. You know, I have to say, Emily, I'm thrilled to hear that we've got a number of Protestant pastors that listen to this show. They've written reviews. Even one of these Protestant pastors lives here in Georgia. He contacted me.

Starting point is 00:24:21 We got together for coffee. He said he tells those who come to his church to listen to Pints with Aquinas. And it's been really beautiful to see that Catholics are open to learning from our evangelical brothers and sisters and vice versa. And yet, I would hate there to be a false ecumenism that results in that maybe a Protestant, in a desire to show his respect for his Catholic brethren, might fail to recognize just what it is the Catholic is saying. I mean, it's quite a radical teaching. It's one thing for the Israelites who worshipped the golden calf, but if the Eucharist is really only bread, and it doesn't even really look like bread,

Starting point is 00:25:06 I mean, bread, what we typically think of bread is usually probably better than that wafer. But yeah, it seems like they would have had more sense than us. At least they were worshipping something that had worldly appeal or worth. Whereas the Catholic, if he's wrong in worshiping this wafer or this cube of bread, he's an idolater. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Eucharist really is kind of the make or break, I think, precisely because it is so, it puts such a demand on our faith that God would not only love us so much that He would send His only Son to die for us, but that He would actually become our food, a piece of bread that's so little and vulnerable and breakable that you could crush underfoot, you know, that it's so easy to desecrate the Eucharist. I just had to interrupt you. I just had a random thought here. Let's suppose that the Bible said something different than it does, right? And it made it outrageously clear that what the disciples received at the Last Supper

Starting point is 00:26:10 was the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. Now, I think it does make it clear as it is, but let's say it's so clear that everyone accepts it and that throughout Christian history, we've all believed that that took place, but perhaps we have no good reason, biblically speaking, to think that it happens anymore. And here's my point. It's kind of easy to accept something that we don't have immediate contact with. I think it was Pascal who said, some look upon Christ and see only a man. And, you know, many of us say, I wish I could see Christ. I wish I lived back then. But if we did, I'm not sure how easy it would have been to accept the claim that this man who had to use the bathroom and who sweat and who had to sleep was really the second person of the Blessed Trinity.

Starting point is 00:26:57 And analogously, having to consume the Eucharist daily or weekly, in some ways that familiarity can be an impediment to accepting the full truth of it. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, I probably would have been with the skeptics saying like, isn't he the son of Joseph? Isn't he the carpenter's son? You know, who is he to go around claiming these outrageous things. And I think the invitation in love is so radical. It really is, apart from the gift of faith, it's really impossible to come to. But I think that's what St. Thomas is inviting us to in the Corpus Christi hymns. He's inviting us to ponder upon the mystery of Christ's own words and how the institution of the Eucharist is this fulfillment of all the things that the Old Testament alluded to and promised and foreshadowed.

Starting point is 00:27:52 And I think that with that invitation, there's a powerful opportunity, kind of along with St. Thomas, to approach Jesus Christ in the humble form of bread and wine in a way that is incredibly intimate, but like you were saying, so marvelous and so hard to wrap our minds around that God would do something so wondrous and so glorious and so mysterious. As we begin to wrap up here today, I want you to talk to us a little bit about how these hymns can increase our love and devotion for the Holy Eucharist. Because no doubt our listeners have learnt, intellectually, a whole lot more, perhaps about what Corpus Christi, where it stems from, and maybe even about what you just talked about, typology and this sort of thing. and this sort of thing, but how can it increase our love so that we don't end up what many people think erroneously that St. Thomas was, namely a brain on a stick, but that we like Thomas can be mystics? Yeah, I think that, you know, there's a beautiful, Sophia Press has a great little

Starting point is 00:28:58 book called The Aquinas Prayer Book. You can get it for like 10 bucks on Amazon. And I love to keep it in my purse. And it's great because it has both the Latin, the original Latin and also the English translation. So it has the Corpus Christi hymns. It has some of his hymns to the Blessed Mother, his prayers after receiving Holy Communion and before reception of Holy Communion. And I think what you see is St. Thomas very beautifully, like a poet, you know, someone who's in love, inviting us to several things. One is an invitation to wonder and to glorify God. So, the Padre Linguaglorio, the typical English translation is, sing my tongue the Savior's glory, of his flesh the mystery sing, of the blood all price excelling, shed by our immortal King, destined for the world's redemption from a noble womb to spring.

Starting point is 00:29:50 And throughout the Corpus Christi hymns, you see these invitations to wonder, to behold, to praise, to adore. And that's a disposition that's really necessary. I know, Matt, a part of your work in the church is speaking out against pornography. And I think that we live in a culture that's very pornographic, using the word very broadly. And all I mean by that is the disposition or inclination to look at someone and say, what can you do for me? Right, right. So this posture of instead of saying, what can you do for me, but rather in front of the person of Jesus Christ to say, how can I adore you?

Starting point is 00:30:23 How can I glorify you? How can I love you? That's a radical antidote to a pornographic culture. Because in the presence of another person, I don't say, what can you do for me? But rather, what can I offer you? How can I reverence you? And so when we start with the Eucharist, reverencing the Eucharist, right? I think then by extension, we can love and reverence

Starting point is 00:30:45 the image of God and the dwelling of the Holy Spirit dwelling in each other human person. So, I think first and foremost, the Corpus Christi hymns teach us to adore and wonder and praise and glorify God in His majesty, but specifically in the mystery of the Eucharist. Along those lines, Emily, you're reminding me of Joseph Pieper's book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, which I'm sure you've read. Yeah, it's one of my favorites. Really? Well, there, you know, he talks about this receiving and this kind of inability of many of us to just receive and to wonder and to appreciate. It's as if we're always kind of aggressively seeking to ascertain knowledge and to fit it into our paradigm as opposed to just standing and receiving. And it's, I take my wife and I,

Starting point is 00:31:32 for the last nearly eight months now, we've been going to a Byzantine Catholic church. And in that church, as well as other Eastern churches, the way one receives the Eucharist is by being literally fed it through a spoon by the priest. And of course, many of us who go to the Roman church would receive our Lord on our tongue or kneeling and just this sense of, I am yours and all I do is open my mouth. And it reminds me of that line from the Psalms, all you must do is open your mouth and I will fill it. Yeah, posture of receiving, yeah. Yeah, when I was in college, the college I'd mentioned before, Thomas Aquinas College, has the extraordinary form of the liturgy, and so you receive on your knees, and I always thought there was something so extraordinarily beautiful and fitting about the fact that Christ continues to condescend to us. He continues to come down to

Starting point is 00:32:26 us. And that posture, I'm sure you've read, Matt, Pope Benedict's Spirit of the Liturgy, this posture of being on our knees before the mystery of God himself is so fitting, and it befits our dignity. Some people, I think, are often offended about the idea of being on our knees or kneeling in front of the Blessed Sacrament. But it's the true reality that God is before us. And so we can still look. Our faces aren't on the floor, right? We're not like little toads. But we can still look up to him. But we've taken on this posture that is so in accord with the fact that we are creatures and that Christ comes down to us in this

Starting point is 00:33:05 very small, hidden way that's so just mind-blowing and beautiful. And I think something else that the Corpus Christi hymns invite us to is to meditate on our redemption, on our littleness, on the fact that we needed to be saved. We needed a savior. So when we sing the O Salutaris, which I mentioned before, we're saying that Christ is the victim, but he's the saving victim. He's the one who redeems us and who saves us. And so this can be a great opportunity to kind of renew our gratitude that Christ loved us so much that he gave his life for us and that he continues to come down from heaven and to be with us in this most he gave his life for us and that he continues to come down from heaven and to be with us in this most intimate way that Christ loves us so much he becomes our food so

Starting point is 00:33:50 that he can be intimate with us and approach our little fallen sinful battered hearts. Thank you so much for listening to Pines with Aquinas. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. A couple of things I want to ask you to do for me. Number one, I would be honored if you would consider supporting Pints with Aquinas on Patreon. I mentioned that in the beginning. Go to pintswithaquinas.com, click the Patreon banner, and that's how you can support me. And then you can feel really good because you're supporting stuff that's hopefully important and helping people. The second thing I want to ask you to do is, if you haven't already, review Pints with Aquinas on iTunes. The more reviews we get, not only the more fancier do we look, but apparently people can find us easier when

Starting point is 00:34:37 they're looking up certain things in the iTunes podcast store. Sound good? Good. God bless you and chat with you next week.

Pints With Aquinas - 54: Tell us about the hymns you wrote for Corpus Christi? With Emily Barry

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