How Corpus Christi Is Connected to St. Augustine

How can a 5th-century Saint be connected to a 13th-century Feast? By a 13th-century Norbertine Canoness who was a student of St Augustine.

From Aleteia

By Philip Kosloski

St. Juliana of Liege, the nun whose vision helped establish the feast of Corpus Christi, was highly influenced by St. Augustine’s writings.

Corpus Christi was influenced by a number of providential events, including a Eucharistic miracle that was seen as confirmation of the need for a feast honoring Jesus’ presence in the Holy Eucharist.

One of the primary inspirations was a remarkable vision that St. Juliana of Liege had in the 13th century.

Jesus spoke to her and interpreted a vision she had, explaining what it was supposed to represent:

"The moon represents the ecclesiastical year. The dark spot within its shining surface means that there is still one feast missing. It is My will that a great festival be instituted in honor of My Sacred Body.”

This request for a feast honoring the Body of Christ in the Eucharist would eventually be celebrated as “Corpus Christi.”

Corpus Christi and St. Augustine

Before St. Juliana had this vision, she was formed by the writings of St. Augustine. Joanne McPortland explains for Aleteia, “Orphaned at the age of 5, she and her sister were housed on a small farm belonging to a double monastery of Norbertines (the French Augustinian canons known as Premonstratensians).”

She is often depicted either wearing the white habit of the Norbertines, or a black habit of the Augustinians.

The Norbertines follow the Rule of St. Augustine and so it is not surprising that she would feel an attraction to the writings of St. Augustine and was immersed in it during her childhood.

The Catholic Encyclopedia explains how she, “read with pleasure the writings of St. Augustine and St. Bernard.” She even reportedly memorized St. Augustine’s writings.

This is fitting, as St. Augustine had a deep devotion to the Eucharist and wrote strongly about Jesus’ Real Presence:

What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the body of Christ, and the chalice is the blood of Christ. This has been said very briefly, which may perhaps be sufficient for faith; yet faith does not desire instruction.

He also wrote, “Nobody eats this flesh without previously adoring it.”

Being filled with a clear understanding of the Eucharist from the writings of St. Augustine, St. Juliana was prepared to receive the extraordinary vision that would be a major influence behind the feast of Corpus Christi.