Excerpts
from a Homily of Pope Benedict XVI on the Eucharist
At the Closing of the 24th
Italian National Eucharistic Congress, Sunday, May 29, 2005, Pope
Benedict gave the homily. Having studied First Corinthian's
beautiful theology of the Eucharist these weeks, it may be inspiring
to hear the Pope encourage devotion to this sacrament. Here
are portions of his message.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
"Glorify the Lord, Jerusalem; Zion, praise your God."
This invitation of the Psalm 147 expresses very clearly
the meaning of this Eucharistic Celebration: we are gathered here
to praise and bless the Lord. This is what urged the Italian
Church to gather here in Bari on the occasion of the National Eucharistic
Congress.
I also wanted to join all
of you today to give special emphasis to the celebration of the
Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, thus to pay homage to
Christ in the Sacrament of His love and at the same time to strengthen
the bonds of communion that bind me to the Church in Italy and to
her Pastors.
In the year 304, the Emperor
Diocletian forbade Christians, on pain of death, from possessing
the Scriptures, from gathering on Sundays to celebrate the Eucharist
and from building places in which to hold their assemblies.
In Abitene, a small village
in present-day Tunisia, 49 Christians were taken by surprise one
Sunday while they were celebrating the Eucharist, gathered in the
house of Octavius Felix, thereby defying the imperial prohibitions.
They were arrested and taken to Carthage to be interrogated by the
Proconsul Anulinus.
Significant among other
things is the answer a certain Emeritus gave to the Proconsul who
asked him why on earth they had disobeyed the Emperor's severe orders.
He replied: "Sine dominico non possumus," that
is, we cannot live without joining together on Sunday to celebrate
the Eucharist. We would lack the strength to face our daily
problems and not to succumb.
After atrocious tortures,
these 49 martyrs of Abitene were killed. Thus, they confirmed
their faith with bloodshed. They died, but they were victorious:
today we remember them in the glory of the Risen Christ.
Christ is truly present
among us in the Eucharist. His presence is not static.
It is a dynamic presence that grasps us, to make us His own, to
make us assimilate Him. Christ draws us to Him, He makes us
come out of ourselves to make us all one with Him. In this
way He also integrates us in the communities of brothers and sisters,
and communion with the Lord is always also communion with our brothers
and sisters. And we see the beauty of this communion that
the Blessed Eucharist gives us.
We are touching on a further
dimension of the Eucharist. The Christ whom we meet in the
Sacrament is the same here in Bari as He is in Rome, here in Europe,
as in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. He is the one same
Christ who is present in the Eucharistic Bread of every place on
earth. This means that we can encounter Him only together
with all others. We can only receive Him in unity. Is
not this what the Apostle Paul said in the reading we have just
heard? In writing to the Corinthians he said: "Because
the loaf of bread is one, we, many though we are, are one body,
for we all partake of the one loaf" (I Cor 10:17).
The consequence is clear:
we cannot communicate with the Lord if we do not communicate with
one another. If we want to present ourselves to Him, we must
also take a step towards meeting one another. To do this we
must learn the great lesson of forgiveness: we must not let the
gnawings of resentment work in our soul, but must open our hearts
to the magnanimity of listening to others, open our hearts to understanding
them, eventually to accepting their apologies, to generously offering
our own.
The Eucharist, let us repeat,
is the sacrament of unity. Unfortunately, however, Christians
are divided, precisely in the sacrament of unity. Sustained
by the Eucharist, we must feel all the more roused to striving with
all our strength for that full unity which Christ ardently desired
in the Upper Room. I would like to reaffirm my desire to assume
as a fundamental commitment working with all my might for the re-establishment
of the full and visible unity of all Christ's followers.
I am aware that expressions
of good will do not suffice for this. We need concrete acts
that penetrate souls and shake consciences, prompting each one to
that inner conversion that is the necessary condition for any progress
on the path of ecumenism. I ask you all to set out with determination
on the path of that spiritual ecumenism which, through prayer, opens
the doors to the Holy Spirit, who alone can create unity.
Dear friends, we must rediscover
the joy of Christian Sundays. We must proudly rediscover the
privilege of sharing in the Eucharist, which is the sacrament of
the renewed world. Christ's Resurrection happened on the first
day of the week, which in the Scriptures is the day of the world's
creation. For this very reason Sunday was considered by the
early Christian community as the day on which the new world began,
the one on which, with Christ's victory over death, the new creation
began.
As they gathered round the
Eucharistic table, the community was taking shape as a new people
of God. St Ignatius of Antioch described Christians as "having
attained new hope" and presented them as people "who lived
in accordance with Sunday" ("iuxta dominicam viventes").
In this perspective, the Bishop of Antioch wondered: "How will
we be able to live without him, the One whom the prophets so long
awaited?" "How will we be able to live without Him?"
In these words of Saint Ignatius we hear echoing the affirmation
of the martyrs of Abitene: "Sine dominico non possumus."
It is this that gives rise
to our prayer: that we too, Christians of today, will rediscover
an awareness of the crucial importance of the Sunday Celebration
and will know how to draw from participation in the Eucharist the
necessary dynamism for a new commitment to proclaiming to the world
Christ "our peace" (Eph 2:14). Amen!
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