*Taken from a talk given by Msgr. Patrick Perez on Sept. 9, 2017 at the Our Lady’s Army of Advocates conference in Irvine, California.

       Saint Juliana was born in the city of Liege (in Belgium), in 1192.  She was baptized, confirmed and received the Sacraments as anybody did at that time.  However, she had it rough from the start.  Juliana was orphaned at the age of five and placed in an orphanage of sorts run by the Norbertine nuns and monks.  She entered that order at the age of 13 and she worked in their leprosarium for a year. In fact, she worked for many years with the lepers, and doing acts of charity.  She wanted to show them God’s kindness and to love them.

       Juliana also had a great devotion to the Holy Eucharist. She was not born with this devotion. She definitely had to work on the love of God, and the love of the Holy Eucharist came from just that.  Because the Holy Eucharist is God.

       When she was 16 she began having visions.  She had the same vision over and over again.  She was startled by it at first and didn’t know what it meant, but finally Our Lord revealed to her what this was.

       The vision was that of a full brilliant moon, and in the full brilliant moon there was a dark spot.  She saw this repeatedly over a course of several years.  Finally, after she had done much praying, Christ told her that the moon stood for the life of the Church on earth, and the spot represented the absence of a liturgical feast in honor of Christ’s Body and Blood.  She wondered and pondered how she, an orphaned girl in a convent with no state in life, could bring about a feast in the Church.  She knew that Christ had not told her these things in vain, that He had not shown her this vision in vain. However, she could see no practical way that she could bring about such a feast.  Juliana then kept this to herself and decided that if she lived a life pleasing to God, that God Himself would somehow, through her, bring it about.

       So around the year 1225, out of humility and obedience, she told her visions to her confessor who was Canon John of Lausanne, who (as God’s providence would have it) had many contacts among the local theologians, distinguished holy men of the Liege area.  Among these contacts that he told about Juliana’s vision was Robert de Thorete and Jacques Pantaleon de Trois.

       Canon John shared Juliana’s visions with them, as well as their meaning – the meaning that Juliana was given.  Then these theologians consulted with each other and decided that such a feast would be a good idea, and they endorsed it. (See how God is just behind everything, working things according to His Providence.)

       Upon getting the approval of the theologian, Saint Juliana did not rest.  Instead, she began actually to compose an Office for the feast (composing the set of prayers that would be said by priests if this were to become a feast day). She had faith that, “God is doing this for a reason,” so she decided to plow ahead.

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       She did indeed compose an Office;  and in 1246 Robert de Thorete, who became the bishop of Liege, instituted the first ever Feast of Christ’s Body and Blood, Corpus Christi, in his diocese – because that is all an individual bishop can start out doing. It was the first ever.  Mind you, it took 1246 years of Catholic souls living on this Eucharist to actually have a feast in honor of It.  This seems a little incredible, but that was God’s will.

       This seed that Juliana planted was then watered with her tears because for the next 18 years Juliana had much to suffer.  This suffering was given to her by Our Lord so that as she accepted it willingly a greater good would be done by it.  Just as Saint Theresa of Avila was pushed out of the convent by her nuns from wealthy families, Saint Juliana, who became prioress of the convent, then instituted strict reforms like Saint Theresa of Avila had done and the nuns wanted no part of it.  They then made her suffer.  They went to various people and they told lies about her.  She was persecuted.  She was thrown out of the convent, and then she was brought in again.  And then she was thrown out again, then she was brought in again. In all that time Juliana was bearing wrongs patiently (a spiritual work of mercy).  So, she accepted this suffering.  In the meanwhile, the other theologian that was mentioned earlier, Jacques Pantaleon de Trois, became the Arch-deacon of Liege, and then Bishop of Verdun, then Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and finally Pope – Pope Urban IV.  He was one of the theologians who had said that the Corpus Christi feast sounds good and whose theological opinion was that it was not against the faith.

       Saint Juliana made contact with him soon after he was made Pope.  She asked him if he remembered the feast that they had talked about, and he did.  She then asked him to make it a Feast in the Church.  So the first thing he did (as God really puts things together ) was to call his personal theologian, his house theologian, at the time.  Who was his house theologian?  Saint Thomas Aquinas, as a matter of fact.  He then said to Saint Thomas, look over Juliana’s Office which she had made, and then would you write a new Office for the Feast?  And so Saint Thomas Aquinas did.

       What did Saint Thomas came up with the beautiful Office that we use to this day, but he also composed the “Tantum Ergo” that we sing in honor of the Blessed Sacrament, which is part of a longer hymn that he wrote for the Feast.  When the Office was written, and the Pope approved with pleasure, he instituted the Feast of  Corpus Christi to be universally celebrated in the Latin Rite on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday.

        So just keep this in mind, that a woman who was just like you, moved mountains by her prayers and sacrifices, so that a vision that she had – which is like the vision the shepherd children were given by Our Lady of Fatima – translated into something that the Pope did for the whole Church, just as we hope to accomplish by our own prayers and sacrifices.

The talk given by Msgr. Patrick Perez had the title: “Be a Duck – Living the Graces of the Forgotten Sacrament for Fatima.”

Spring 2018 issue of The Fatima Crusader