Adoration
How to Take Part in a Eucharistic Procession
Eucharistic Adoration · 7 steps
Corpus Christi and other Eucharistic processions: what they mean, how a parish prepares the route and altars, the order of the procession, hymns and the Rosary along the way, Benediction at the stations and at the end.
7 steps · About 1 hour
In a Eucharistic procession the Blessed Sacrament is carried in a monstrance through the streets or the parish grounds, with hymns, prayers and candles, as a public act of faith in Christ's presence and a blessing on the place. The Church's law and rites provide for it, above all on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi), which in the United States is kept on the Sunday after Trinity Sunday; the Directory on Popular Piety calls the Corpus Christi procession the 'sequel' to the Mass of that day. Saint John Paul II, in Mane Nobiscum Domine, asked parishes to hold such processions during the Year of the Eucharist. This guide explains how the procession is ordered and how to take part well.
What you need
- A parish or diocesan procession, usually after the Corpus Christi Mass or at the close of Forty Hours; the bulletin will give the time and route
- Comfortable shoes, and dress suitable for Mass
- A rosary, and the hymns (Pange Lingua, Tantum Ergo, O Salutaris) which the parish usually prints
- A candle, if the parish provides them
When to pray it
On Corpus Christi (the Sunday after Trinity Sunday in the United States; the Thursday in some places), at the close of Forty Hours devotion, at Eucharistic congresses, and on other occasions the bishop approves.
Steps
Step 1: Understand the meaning of the procession
A Eucharistic procession is not a parade about the Eucharist; it is Christ himself, sacramentally present, walking among his people and through their streets. It professes the Real Presence publicly, asks his blessing on homes, fields and workplaces, and images the pilgrim Church following her Lord. The Church asks that it be arranged with the local bishop's judgement as to whether it is fitting in a given place, and that it be done with dignity and reverence, never in a way that would expose the Sacrament to irreverence.
Tips
- Walk behind the Blessed Sacrament, not ahead of it, unless you are a server or in the choir. The Lord leads.
- Keep singing and praying along the whole route; a silent, chatting procession says the opposite of what a procession means.
- Kneel when the monstrance is raised in blessing at each station; a street is no obstacle.
- Bring children; a procession is the Eucharistic teaching they will remember.