It's a special Sunday where Catholics flow out of their churches and onto the streets in celebration of their faith. They process through their neighborhoods singing hymns, reading Scripture, praying litanies and toting banners. Incense fills the air and first communicants in suits and white dresses lay a path of rose petals before the Blessed Sacrament as it is held aloft for the world to see.

The feast of Corpus Christi, to be celebrated on Sunday, June 26, is a colorful and inspiring way for Catholics to publicly display Christ's presence in the Eucharist.

"I love being out in the street, in the city, with Jesus, just professing your faith — no holds barred," says Kristin Yoshimura, music director and co-coordinator of this year's Corpus Christi procession at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Camas. "I think it's great testimony to who we are as Catholics to honor the Blessed Sacrament and just fearlessly take him out for everyone to see."

St. Thomas Aquinas is among parishes throughout Western Washington planning Corpus Christi processions on Sunday.

"It's a beautiful opportunity to give witness to our Eucharistic faith, and a reminder for people that Jesus is still with us," said Father Derek Lappe, pastor of Our Lady Star of the Sea Parish in Bremerton, where some 500 parishioners filled the surrounding streets in last year's procession.

Stops for Benediction
Known as the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi (Latin for the body of Christ) is celebrated on the second Sunday after Pentecost. The procession begins at the end of Mass. The Eucharist is placed in the monstrance and carried through the streets at eye level by the priest under a brocaded canopy called a "baldacchino."

Altar servers in their cassocks and surplices lead the way as parishioners tote banners of their guilds and other parish organizations. In some cases, loud speakers are brought along to amplify the music, prayers and Scripture readings for curious onlookers. Along the route, the procession stops for Benediction at up to six altars set up in front of parishioners' homes or businesses, with the final Benediction held back at the church.

The feast dates back to 1263 in Italy when a German priest on a pilgrimage to Rome stopped in Bolsena, about 70 miles north of the city. Suffering doubts about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the priest, Peter of Prague, was celebrating Mass when the host he had consecrated was said to have started bleeding. After an investigation into the incident, Pope Urban IV established the feast the next year.

He commissioned St. Thomas Aquinas to write the official prayers for Corpus Christi. Known as the "office," the prayers include Aquinas' famed responsory, "O Sacrum Convivium," which says: "O Sacred Banquet! In which Christ is received, the memory of his passion recalled, the soul filled with grace, and the pledge of future glory given to us."

Aquinas' eucharistic hymn "Pange Lingua" is sung at Benediction. It includes the well-known stanzas of "Tantum Ergo" ("Down in adoration falling").

Today, the feast continues to openly affirm "the faith of the People of God in Jesus Christ, alive and truly present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist," Pope Benedict XVI noted in his 2007 homily on Corpus Christi.

It is "a renewal of the mystery of Holy Thursday," the pope said, "in obedience to Jesus' invitation to proclaim from 'the housetops' what he told us in secret. It was the apostles who received the gift of the Eucharist from the Lord in the intimacy of the Last Supper, but it was destined for all, for the whole world. This is why it should be proclaimed and exposed to view: so that each one may encounter 'Jesus who passes' … in order that each one, in receiving it, may be healed and renewed by the power of his love."

Processions with flair
The processions in Western Washington draw hundreds of participants each year, and each celebration has its own special flair.

At St. Thomas Aquinas in Camas, trumpeters will announce the arrival at each altar. The procession, celebrated last year by some 250 people despite a driving rain, will cover a mile-long route into town to near the city library and then back again. The children's choir will ring bells along the way and police officers who are also parishioners will handle traffic control.

At St. James Cathedral Parish in Seattle, while choirs sing and bagpipers play, a hand-embroidered, satin baldacchino that possibly dates to the cathedral's 1907 construction will shield the Eucharist in a procession that will encircle the block, said Corinna Laughlin, pastoral assistant for liturgy. Weather permitting, Pastor Father Michael G. Ryan will wear a gold-colored cope that goes back at least to the time of Bishop Edward O'Dea a century ago.

Bremerton's procession will begin after the parish children present a pageant on Peter of Prague. The approximately one-and-a-quarter-mile route will run through the neighborhood, with stops for Benediction in front of parishioners' homes. Father Lappe has a special love for the feast, having helped coordinate Corpus Christi processions in Rome when he was a seminarian at the North American College there. He initiated the procession in Camas when he was pastor there.

St. Mary Magdalen Parish in Everett will hold its inaugural procession. It will include altars for Benediction at the homes of two parishioners. Father Hans Olson, pastor, hopes the experience will give participants "a sense of the presence of Christ (and his grace) in our midst."

Parish leaders note that the first thing they do in planning for the feast is obtain permission from the archbishop to take the Eucharist outside the church. Processions that require temporary street closures also need a permit from the city.

"The thing that I love best," said Laughlin, of St. James Cathedral, "is that the most precious thing we have — the celebration of the Eucharist — on this day comes outside the walls of the church and right out into the city streets. People stop and stare; they're looking from apartment windows, and they see the joy and our faith in the real presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

"It's a wonderful way of being reminded that that's what we're supposed to be doing every single time we go to Mass," she said. "We receive the Eucharist, and we're supposed to live it in the world." "O Sacred Banquet! In which Christ is received, the memory of his passion recalled, the soul filled with grace, and the pledge of future glory given to us."