Feast of Corpus Christi

I wanted to know more about this great Feast of the Church. Here is some of what I gathered:

The Feast of Corpus Christi is an important solemnity celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church, traditionally on the Thursday following Trinity Sunday. “Corpus Christi” literally translates to mean “Body of Christ,” therefore it can obviously be concluded that the Feast of Corpus Christi celebrates the Holy Eucharist. Due to the centrality of the Eucharist within our Catholic Faith, the Church has deemed it necessary to call this feast day a holy day of obligation for all Catholics.
How did such a feast day come to be? This holy day of the Church can be most attributed to St. Juliana of Belgium. Juliana, from a very early age had quite a devotion and great fidelity for the Blessed Sacrament. It was this strong attachment to the Eucharist, that always left her longing for a special feast in it’s honor. This desire was reinforced through her “vision of the Church under the appearance of the full moon having one dark spot, which signified the absence of such a solemnity” (Mershman). Her sharing of this vision caught the attention of some highly influential men, those being Bishop Robert de Thorete, the future Cardinal Dominican Hugh, Archdeacon Jacques Pantaleon, and eventually Pope Urban IV. Bishop Robert de Thorete was especially enthused by the devotion and vision of Juliana, that he used his Episcopal authority to order a local Corpus Christi celebration in the following liturgical year. He even went as far to order a specific monk to write the new office for it’s occasion.
It was the Bishop of Liege who made the push for a universality of the local feast. By the grace of God, Pope Urban IV was already an aficionado of the feast and shortly after the Bishop’s appeal, published “Transiturus” in September of 1264, which ordered Corpus Christi to be celebrated annually each Thursday after Trinity Sunday. Along with this order, he even granted special indulgences for those faithful who attended the Corpus Christi feast masses.
To this day, Corpus Christi is celebrated annually, the Thursday after Trinity Sunday and in some regions, the Sunday after Trinity Sunday. “Typically Corpus Christi services consist of singing traditional hymns Lauda Sion and Pange Lingua, both attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas” (Bennett). There are certain devotional practices that have, over the years, become the norm. One of these practices is the Corpus Christi Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, ending with Benediction. Within the context of the mass, the liturgical color is white and the readings are on a specific three year cycle. This year, the readings are as follows; Genesis 14: 18-20, Psalm 110: 1,2,3,4, 1 Corinthians 11: 23-26, and Luke 9: 11-17 (Bennett).