Here ya go.
CORPUS CHRISTI
The Feast of the Blessed Sacrament, established in 1246 by Bishop Robert de Thorote of Liège, at the suggestion of St. Juliana of Mont Cornillon (1192-1258). Its observance was extended to the Universal Church by Pope Urban IV in 1264. The office for the day was composed by St. Thomas Aquinas, and the customary procession was approved by Popes Martin V and Eugene IV. Now celebrated as the solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ on the first Thursday (or Sunday) after the feast of the Holy Trinity.
Feast of Corpus Christi
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(Feast of the Body of Christ)
This
feast is celebrated in the
Latin Church on the Thursday after
Trinity Sunday to
solemnly commemorate the institution of the
Holy Eucharist.
Of
Maundy Thursday, which commemorates this great event, mention is made as
Natalis Calicis (Birth of the Chalice) in the Calendar of Polemius (448) for the 24th of March, the 25th of March being in some places considered as the day of the death of
Christ. This day, however, was in
Holy Week, a season of sadness, during which the
minds of the
faithful are expected to be occupied with thoughts of the
Lord's Passion. Moreover, so many other functions took place on this day that the principal event was almost lost sight of. This is mentioned as the chief reason for the introduction of the new
feast, in the
Bull "Transiturus."
The instrument in the hand of
Divine Providence was
St. Juliana of
Mont Cornillon, in
Belgium. She was born in 1193 at Retines near
Liège.
Orphaned at an early age, she was
educated by the
Augustinian nuns of
Mont Cornillon. Here she in time made her
religious profession and later became superioress. Intrigues of various kinds several times drove her from her
convent. She died 5 April, 1258, at the House of the
Cistercian nuns at Fosses, and was
buried at
Villiers.
Juliana, from her early youth, had a great
veneration for the
Blessed Sacrament, and always longed for a special
feast in its
honour. This desire is said to have been increased by a
vision of the
Church under the appearance of the full moon having one dark spot, which signified the absence of such a
solemnity. She made known her
ideas to Robert de Thorete, then
Bishop of
Liège, to the learned
Dominican Hugh, later
cardinal legate in the
Netherlands, and to
Jacques Pantaléon, at that time
Archdeacon of
Liège, afterwards
Bishop of
Verdun,
Patriarch of
Jerusalem, and finally
Pope Urban IV. Bishop Robert was favourably impressed, and, since
bishops as yet had the
right of ordering
feasts for their
dioceses, he called a
synod in 1246 and ordered the celebration to be held in the following year, also, that a
monk named John should write the Office for the occasion. The
decree is preserved in
Binterim (Denkwürdigkeiten, V, 1, 276), together with parts of the Office.
Bishop Robert did not live to see the execution of his order, for he died 16 October, 1246; but the
feast was celebrated for the first time by the canons of St. Martin at
Liège.
Jacques Pantaléon became
pope 29 August, 1261. The
recluse Eve, with whom
Juliana had spent some time, and who was also a fervent adorer of the
Holy Eucharist, now urged Henry of Guelders,
Bishop of
Liège, to request the
pope to extend the celebration to the entire world.
Urban IV, always an admirer of the
feast, published the
Bull "Transiturus" (8 September, 1264), in which, after having extolled the
love of
Our Saviour as expressed in the
Holy Eucharist, he ordered the annual celebration of Corpus Christi in the Thursday next after
Trinity Sunday, at the same time granting many
indulgences to the
faithful for the attendance at Mass and at the Office. This Office, composed at the request of the
pope by the
Angelic Doctor St. Thomas Aquinas, is one of the most beautiful in the
Roman Breviary and has been admired even by
Protestants.
The death of
Pope Urban IV (2 October, 1264), shortly after the publication of the
decree, somewhat impeded the spread of the
festival.
Clement V again took the matter in hand and, at the
General Council of Vienne (1311), once more ordered the adoption of the
feast. He published a new
decree which embodied that of
Urban IV.
John XXII, successor of
Clement V, urged its observance.
Neither
decree speaks of the theophoric
procession as a feature of the celebration. This
procession, already held in some places, was endowed with
indulgences by
Popes Martin V and
Eugene IV.
The
feast had been accepted in 1306 at
Cologne; Worms adopted it in 1315;
Strasburg in 1316. In
England it was introduced from
Belgium between 1320 and 1325. In the
United States and some other countries the
solemnity is held on the
Sunday after
Trinity. In the
Greek Church the
feast of Corpus Christi is known in the
calendars of the
Syrians,
Armenians,
Copts,
Melchites, and the
Ruthenians of Galicia, Calabria, and
Sicily.
but i'm not Catholic so i have no clue about this... also, how does it relate to the Ark of the Covenant if it has any relation?
Sorry..... Didn't know how else to show ya jazzy 
i skimmed through it. but i did reread it. i wasnt really looking for church history though. i was just trying to understand what it means or what its symbolic of and how (if at all) does it relate to the Ark of the Covenant
