Out into the Streets

During my recent visit to Poland, my priest friend of 33 years, Father Leszek Harasz, and I were walking in the huge Market Square in Krakow. It was a beautiful sunny day, and many people were milling about the square and going into the Church of St. Mary to spend time in adoration before the exposed Blessed Sacrament. Many Ukrainian refugees were present in the square and organizing a prayer service for the protection of their homeland. There was an atmosphere of openness and free expression of deeply held religious faith.
           
It reminded me that there were decades in the 20th century when freedom and the expression of faith were not the reality in the streets of Krakow. During the time of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła (later Pope John Paul II), there was a great conflict between the Church and the communist state. One of the very visible manifestations of the tense relationship was the Corpus Christi procession.
           
This historic expression of faith was forbidden by the authorities. It had been banned during the Nazi occupation. Under the communists, because of the insistence of Cardinal Wojtyła, a truncated outdoor procession occurred on the cathedral grounds only. Cardinal Wojtyła was absolutely convinced that the Lord Jesus truly present in the Blessed Sacrament needed to be taken out into the streets as a sign of faith and hope for people and a testimony to the presence of God in their midst.
           
On June 10, 1971, the first time since the Second World War that the Corpus Christi procession was permitted beyond the cathedral grounds, Archbishop Wojtyła preached at the fourth stational altar, “We are the citizens of our country, the citizens of our city, but we are also a people of God which has its own Christian sensibility…”
           
His desire to take the Blessed Sacrament into the streets of his beloved Krakow and into the Market Square (where I recently walked) was about claiming a space for God. He was not talking about space in only a geographical sense. Rather, Cardinal Wojtyła was speaking about the Body of Christ, the People of God, the Church, asserting its rightful place in the world. The brilliance of his idea was that the Church as the Body of Christ -- the baptized -- claimed this space by walking in procession with the Real Presence of the Body of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
           
For years, the Corpus Christi procession continued in this greatly truncated path. In 1977, during the procession with the Blessed Sacrament, Cardinal Wojtyła said, “I spoke of our matters (freedom to live and express our faith)…so that we might all understand that He, living in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, lives our human life…”  Only after his election as pope, on a return visit to his homeland, was he able to take Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament into Market Square.
           
As we look forward to Corpus Christi Sunday with Mass and the procession with Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament in our parishes or in St. Paul Cathedral, the words of Pope St. John Paul II should inspire us. We take Jesus Himself in the Blessed Sacrament into our streets to express our deep and abiding faith in Him truly, sacramentally present in our midst, so that a world that desperately needs love and healing may experience His merciful Presence.
           
That is precisely what Pope Francis spoke of on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi in 2021: “In the end, and at the end of our solemn Eucharistic liturgies as well, only love will remain. Even now, our Eucharistic celebrations are transforming the world to the extent that we are allowing ourselves to be transformed and to become bread broken for others.”

Most Reverend William J. Waltersheid
Auxiliary Bishop of Pittsburgh