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Corpus Christi in Poland

Just back from Mass In the tiny Polish town where I have the good fortune and joy to live, I am reflecting on what I have just seen and done.

The main square has been transformed: four beautifully decorated altars set up in the street, and the pavement is a one-sided avenue of waist-high branches, cut from trees, and jammed upright into the cracks between paving stones.

The church is packed for Mass, with about a hundred people standing, kneeling in the churchyard, where loudspeakers relay the liturgy. Children of all ages stand, kneel, respond like adults.

After Mass, the Host is carried in procession round the town square, with four uniformed firemen carrying the baldachin. Most of the town’s one thousand population follow, recent first communicant children dressed in white, little girls like brides, boys like little Popes, everyone singing hymns and answering responses.

At each of the temporary altars there is a reading from one of the four Gospels, followed by prayers, with everyone kneeling in the road, which is still damp from last night’s rain.

It’s a national holiday, the roads to the square blocked from traffic by police, and everyone dignified and seemingly seriously happy.

And I think of how it was in England, before Henry VIII and the Great Fraud.

And I thank God for Poland, "Christ among the nations".