Corpus Christi

Yesterday was Corpus Christi (Fronleichnam in German) in Freiburg, and the experience made the entire ticket here worthwhile. We had heard about lots of small town processions on this day that feature the local traditional costumes of the Black Forest, but it was pretty hard to get information on when and where those processions might be, and transit runs on a Sunday schedule today, so we went for the simple route of attending mass at the central Muenster in Freiburg.

 

We arrived a little late, and barely got in the door. The place was packed and the mass, (Mozart’s Missa Brevis), was in full swing. The aisles were lined with flags and people in various costumes. Only as the procession got underway did we see that most of the costumed folk were members of local trade guilds: butchers, bakers, miners, each carrying a flag as well as a grand medieval-looking altar. (We saw these same altars later at the local museum of medieval art – they were the real thing.  Some of the same symbols, such as pretzels for the bakers, are also featured in the cathedral’s stained glass windows, since the guilds helped finance the building of the cathedral in the first place). There were also a number of university fraternities represented, decked out in colorful uniforms and ceremonial swords. Needless to say, Katie, who was tired of standing, perked up once she could see the costumes.

 

The entire procession moved out of the cathedral, and that’s where it got really interesting. They had rigged up a sound system from the worship space throughout the entire Altstadt (old city), so that as we walked through the town you could follow every prayer, every reading, and sing along on about eight hymns. And, I have to say, it appeared that there were very few merely curious onlookers – there was a lot of good singing going on around us. The city was otherwise shut down – the streetcars stopped along the route, all the stores closed. A number of shopkeepers and homeowners had set up small altars and icons along the route bedecked with flowers.

 

The service concluded back on the square outside the cathedral with the singing of Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus and more prayers in a variety of languages. In all: three hours. Makes our Easter Vigil look like a short prayer service.

 

Corpus Christi is one of those Roman Catholic feasts which is not celebrated among Protestants and viewed as somewhat suspect even among some Catholic theologians because of its medieval origins. The original intent was the adoration of the host itself, with an emphasis on the value of seeing the transubstantiated body and processing it around. Obviously, it’s a kind of piety not much featured in Lutheran circles. But the tradition seems to have survived precisely because of the kind of thing I witnessed today: an opportunity for a community to come together and move the body of Christ – the people – outside the church walls and into the streets people daily traverse. What I experienced was a recognition of the Monday-Saturday vocations of believers and a visible way of praying for the places we live and work.

 

Of course, it got me thinking about how such a witness could possibly work anyplace else. How would the “guilds” of our U.S. churches– the educators, social workers, lawyers, doctors and business owners – represent their daily work in procession? Will reminded me of a Garrison Keillor line, something about Protestants attempting to do public processions looking like a large party of people walking to lunch. 

 

But seriously, how could the community move into the city and the work of the people – literally the body of Christ – be recognized as Christ’s presence outside the church walls? Of course we do so every day, in all kinds of ways spoken and unspoken, recognized and not. But there is value in making these things visible, if only once a year.