Collect for Corpus Christi

Breviary 

O GOD, who under a wonderful Sacrament hast left unto us a memorial of thy Passion: Grant us we beseech thee. so to venerate the sacred mysteries of thy Body and Blood. that we may ever perceive within ourselves the fruit of thy redemption, who livest and reignest with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

Reflection
As we leave the time of the major feasts and move into so-called "Ordinary Time", we find that we often fall into the temptation of seeing green Sundays as being "normal," "standard," or even "humdrum." Have we overindulged upon our feasts after being overzealous in our fasts so that the green time becomes just ordinary and thus nothing special.

The feast of Corpus Christi helps to show us that "Ordinary Time" is actually something much more than ordinary. Every Sunday, we are presented with the memorial of the Passion, looking back to the pain of Holy Week, and the abstinence of Lent. We can look back further to the Incarnation and the Epiphany, and in so doing we are looking forward to Advent again. As far as the liturgical year is concerned, looking back is the same as looking forward because we find ourselves inextricably linked to the drama of our salvation.

In venerating the mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ, we find that Green Time is far from not being special and that ordinary possesses the character of the extraordinary as the miracle of Christ's continued presence with us is renewed in our sight. This is the fruit of our redemption - it is always with us in fast, feast, or ordinary time. We always possess that miracle expounded in Advent: God with us, It feeds us, gives us purpose and joins us to the Eternal. In Corpus Christi, we see yet another way in which the Christian year is entwined in and around the central fact of Emmanuel.