Oxford’s Corpus Christi Procession

Each year, the North Oxford Deanery organises a Eucharistic Procession to mark the Feast of Corpus Christi. The Blessed Sacrament is carried from the Oxford Oratory to the Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy, pausing at Blackfriars Priory where a sermon is preached.

This year, Bishop William Kenney CP, auxiliary bishop of Birmingham, led the procession and preached the sermon at Blackfriars. The bishop encouraged us in our act of witness to the city of Oxford and echoed Pope Benedict’s recent document Sacramentum Caritatis exhorting us to live a Eucharistic life, marked by a concern for the needs of the world:

“The first and fundamental mission that we receive from the sacred mysteries we celebrate is that of bearing witness by our lives. The wonder we experience at the gift God has made to us in Christ gives new impulse to our lives and commits us to becoming witnesses of his love.”

Below are more photographs from the celebration, with verses from the Sequence hymn ‘Lauda Sion’ by St Thomas Aquinas, which was sung by a schola of Dominican friars as the Blessed Sacrament was carried into the church:

“‘The bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world’ (John 6:51). In these words the Lord reveals the true meaning of the gift of his life for all people. These words also reveal his deep compassion for every man and woman… In the Eucharist Jesus also makes us witnesses of God’s compassion towards all our brothers and sisters… Keeping in mind the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, we need to realize that Christ continues today to exhort his disciples to become personally engaged: “You yourselves, give them something to eat” (Matthew 14:16). Each of us is truly called, together with Jesus, to be bread broken for the life of the world.” – Sacramentum Caritatis, 88.