Michigan Area members took a prominent part in the Archdiocese of Detroit’s Corpus Christi celebration on June 2 at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Mass was followed by a Eucharistic procession down Detroit’s Woodward Avenue.

Taking up the gifts at Mass were Andrea Smith, DM; Dr. Freddy Sosa, KM; and Josefina Sosa, DM. Eileen Newell, DM, proclaimed the second reading. The Cathedral Choir Academy, which includes two children of Andrea Smith and Michigan Area Chair Andy Smith, KM, sang at the Mass.

Mass was celebrated by the Most Rev. Allen H. Vigneron, archbishop of Detroit, a chaplain of the Michigan Area. In his homily, he emphasized the Eucharist as the blood of the New Covenant between God and his people. “A covenant is always about sharing a bond … to establish a bond [in blood] is unbreakable … We take the cup of salvation, the cup without which there is no salvation, the cup which is communion in the love, in the heart of the blood of Christ.”

Photos by Valaurian Waller | Detroit Catholic

The archbishop described the public procession with the Blessed Sacrament as “a kind of public way for the Church to boast. Not to boast about ourselves, but to boast about the gift that Christ is to us. To say to our world, ‘We have a treasure, a treasure we’ve never merited, a treasure that is far beyond our worth, but a treasure we can be sure of, because we are sure of the love of Christ crucified and risen.’”

Despite cloudy skies that threatened rain, the Eucharistic Procession went forward, with Archbishop Vigneron carrying the Eucharist. Sixteen Knights and Dames of the Michigan Area, and one candidate in formation, walked in the procession.

For his many years of dedicated service to the Order, Archbishop Vigneron was recently given a very special honor: At the concluding Mass of this year’s American Association’s Lourdes Pilgrimage, he was  named a Grand Cross Conventual Chaplain Ad honorem in the Order of Malta (GCChC).

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