The Archbishop of Arequipa (Peru), Bishop Javier del Río, highlighted that Corpus Christi, the solemnity that the Catholic Church celebrates this Sunday highlighting the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, is “the celebration of the victory” of Christ over the sin and death.
In an article sent to ACI Prensa on June 1, the Peruvian prelate recalls that this festival is celebrated with a Mass and a solemn procession, “in which the Christian community pays festive worship to Jesus, present in the consecrated host that is carried through the streets amidst songs and other forms of praise that spring from the grateful hearts of the faithful.”
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“Like every Eucharistic celebration, the center of the feast of Corpus Christi is the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ over sin and death,” the archbishop highlighted.
“The main celebration of this victory takes place at the Easter Vigil, with which Holy Week ends; but it is prolonged in each Mass, especially in the Sunday Mass which is our weekly Easter.”
In Corpus Christi, he continued, “Catholics give thanks to God and celebrate Jesus Christ our Savior in a peculiar way.”
“Like soldiers who return victorious from battle, the faithful receive Jesus in the Eucharist and parade him through the streets amid songs of joy, because He has also won in combat and has freed us from our enemies.”
Bishop Del Río also highlighted that “in his passion and on the cross, Jesus of Nazareth engaged in a great combat against evil and death. After shedding his blood for the forgiveness of our sins, by resurrecting he destroyed death, defeated evil and freed us from our main enemy, the devil.
The archbishop also explained that “today’s feast reminds us that the Church is the people chosen by God, who travels the paths of this world but with its gaze fixed on its final goal: Heaven for which God has created man. ”.
For this reason, the prelate encouraged all the faithful to “constantly feed on the Body of Christ, participating at least in Sunday Mass.”
“If anyone finds themselves in a situation of sin, allow me to invite you not to be afraid to confess, to receive God’s forgiveness and thus once again taste how well you live by nourishing yourself with this Bread of Eternal Life,” he concluded.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.