Day 5, Of Fronleichnam

This Thursday was Maundy (sp?) Thursday, or Corpus Christi, and apparently it is a much bigger deal in Europe than in America, maybe because a larger percentage of people where I am right now are Catholic than at home. Everything was closed again for the holy day (very few shops were open, the streets were much less busy) and we attended some of the goings on as part of our cultural class.

While I’m not exactly sure what Corpus Christi is about (EDIT: I did a little research and it is about celebrating the tradition surrounding the Eucharist and I think it’s called “grün Donnerstag” or Fronleichnam in German), this is the gist of what I understood about the day’s happenings. First, there is mass in the Regensburg Dom, which we attended. Except for being entirely in German and held in a centuries old cathedral, it seemed very similar to other masses I have attended in America. I could understand a fair bit of it and even recognized which story from the scripture they were using.

Afterward there was a procession through Regensburg with six altars set up at different areas around the city. The people were supposed to attend them in a certain order I think, depending on what group they belonged to (parents with small children, student groups like fraternities, etc) and then the procession would end at another church with a different service. I left after the first mass because I had class and I don’t know what you were actually supposed to do at the altars, but it was pretty interesting to see how many people showed up for the whole thing. It was taken very seriously.I also got to see the Regensburg boy’s choir for free, since they sang at mass.

It would have been really bad manners to take pictures during mass, so here's a bad photo of the outside of the Dom.

This is one of the altars set up around Regensburg.