18 How the Church Has Changed the World the event, Pope Honorius declared a new holiday: Corpus Christi. The feast was celebrated on the Thursday before Trinity Sunday. That was a deft theological move that Pope Honorius made. We were meant to think of the three great Thursdays in the history of salvation: the Thursday of the Lord’s Supper, the Thursday of the Lord’s Ascension, and now the Thursday of the Lord’s presence among us in the sacrament of the altar, until the end of time. The feast was held for three days, too—echoing the three days commemorating Christ’s Passion and Death, before the triumph of Easter. But these three concluded with the Sunday that celebrated the most profound mystery of God, that he is both One and a Communion of three Persons. Overnight the holiday became immensely popular. It didn’t have the sweet merriment of Christmas, or the solemn joy of Easter. It had the boldness and breadth of summer days filled with light. So, some priest, somewhere—call him Francisco Capra—got an idea. Why not celebrate the holiday by putting on stage the whole of the cosmos, the whole of the history of salvation? Not just one play, but a whole series of plays, rejoicing at the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and drawing near to the Blessed Trinity? With the swiftness of a wildfire and the rush of a mighty stream, drama swept across Europe, and
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzMzNzY=