Bishop Larry Silva on June 2 will lead the diocese’s annual 1.25-mile Corpus Christi procession from the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa in Kalihi-Palama to the downtown Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace.
The observance of the feast, also known as the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, will begin with a 5 a.m. eucharistic adoration in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace.
Bishop Silva will celebrate Mass at 10:30 a.m. at the co-cathedral before leading the public procession at 11:45 a.m. The procession will end with adoration and a Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament at 1 p.m. in the cathedral.
The bishop will carry a monstrance holding the Holy Eucharist, while shielded from the noonday sun by a canopy on poles carried by volunteers. During the walk, he and others will lead hymns and prayers. Priests and deacons will also help carry the monstrance.
The procession will go down School Street and up Nuuanu Avenue, over the freeway and Vineyard Boulevard, to Beretania Street and the cathedral. The walk takes more than an hour for all the marchers to complete. Participants in previous years have numbered in the hundreds, and have stretched the length of a city block.
The eucharistic procession on the feast of Corpus Christi is the universal Catholic tradition.
According to “Holy Communion and Worship of the Eucharist Outside Mass,” a Vatican document issued 40 years ago on the feast of Corpus Christi, a procession of “special importance and meaning of the pastoral life to the parish or city” is “desirable … when it can truly be a sign of common faith and adoration.”
When Bishop Silva initiated the co-cathedral to cathedral procession in 2007, he offered this explanation: “We, who are his (Jesus’) Body, take our faith to the streets to demonstrate that our faith is not only meant to be lived inside the church, but it is to transform society, to bring it healing and reconciliation.”
“Just as he walked through the towns of Galilee, Judea and Samaria, he also can walk through Honolulu,” he said.
