BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

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Dear brothers and sisters!

The Psalm says, "How good it is, how pleasant, where the people dwell as one!" (Ps 133,1).

It is really so. It's a reason for great joy for me to be back with you and to share all the good works that the parishes and other ecclesial organisms in Rome have achieved in the past pastoral year.

With fraternal affection I greet the Cardinal Vicar (Agostino Vallini) and thank him for the kind words he addressed to me and for his daily commitment in governing the diocese and his support for priests and the parish communities.

I greet the Auxiliary Bishops, the entire priesthood, and each of you, awith a heartfelt thought to those who are sick and in particular difficulties, assuring them of my prayers.

As I reminded Cardinal Vallini, we have been committed since the past year to verifying ordinary pastoral work in the diocese. This evening, we will reflect on two points of primary importance: "Sunday Eucharist and the testimony of charity".

I am familiar with the great work that parishes, associations and movements have achieved, through activities of training and dialog, to examine in depth and to better live these two fundamental components of the life and mission of the Church and of every single believer.

This has also favored that pastoral co-responsibility which, in the diversity of ministries adn charisms, should always be disseminated if we truly wish the Gospel to reach the heart of every Roman. So much has been done, and we thank the Lord for it; But still much more remains to be done, always with his help.

Faith can never be taken for granted, because every generation needs to receive this gift through the announcement of the Gospel, to know the truth that Christ has revealed to us. Thus the Church is always committed to propose the entire deposit of faith.

That includes the doctrine of the Eucharist - the central mystery which contains "all the spiritual good of the Church, namely, Christ himself, our Easter" (Conc. Ecum. Vat. II, Decr. Presbyterorum ordinis, 5).

A doctrine which today, unfortunately, is not sufficiently understood in its profound value and its relevance to the existence of believers.
That is why it is important that a more profound knowledge of the mystery of the Body and Blood of the Lord must be felt as a need, in the different communities of our Diocese of Rome.

At the same time, following the missionary spirit that we wish to nourish, it is necessary to spread the commitment to announce this Eucharistic faith, so that every man may encounter Jesus Christ who has shown us 'the God who is near', a friend of mankind, and to bear witness to him with an eloquent life of charity.

In all his public life, Jesus, through preaching the Gospel and miraculous signs, announced the goodness and mercy of the Father towards man. This mission culminated on Golgotha, where the crucified Christ revealed the face of God, so that man, contemplating the Cross, could recognize the fullness of love (cfr. Benedetto XVI, Enc. Deus caritas est, 12).

The sacrifice on Calvary was mysteriously anticipated in the Last Supper, when Jesus, sharing bread and wine with the Twelve, transformed it into his Body and Blood, which he would offer later as the immolated Lamb.

The Eucharist is the commemoration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, of his love to the very end for each of us - a commemoration that he entrusted to the Church so that it would be celebrated for centuries.

According to the meaning of the Jewish verb 'zakar', this memorial is not just a remembrance of something that took place in the past, but a celebration that makes the event actual in a way that reproduces its salvific power and efficacy.

Thus, "it renders present and actual the sacrifice that Christ offered the Father on the Cross, once and for all, for the good of mankind" (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 280).

Dear brothers and sisters, in our time, the word 'sacrifice' is not liked - rather, it is thought to belong to other eras and to a different way of understanding life. But, well understood, sacrifice is and remains fundamental, because it reveals to us the love with which God, in Christ, loves us.

In the offering Jesus makes of himself, we find all the novelty of Christian worship. In ancient times, men offered animals or the first fruits of the land as a sacrifice to their divinities. Jesus instead offered himself, his body and his entire existence: He himself in person becomes the sacrifice that the liturgy offers in the Holy Mass. Indeed, with the consecration, the bread and wine become his true Body and Blood.

St. Augustine invited his faithful not to dwell on what appears to their eyes, but to go beyond: "Recognize in the bread", he wrote, "the same body that hung on the Cross, and in the chalice, the same blood that gushed forth from his side" (Disc. 228 B, 2).

To explain this transformation, theology coined the word 'trans-substantiation', a word that first resounded in this Basilica during the fourth Lateran Council, whose eighth centenary will come in five years.

On that occasion, the following statement was added to the Profession of Faith: "His Body and Blood are truly contained in the Sacrament of the altar, in the form of bread and wine, since the bread has been trans-substantiated into his Body, and the wine into blood through divine power" (DS, 802).

It is therefore fundamental that in courses for educating children, adolescents and young people in the faith, as well as in the 'listening centers' for the Word of God, it is underscored that in the sacrament of the Eucharist, Christ is truly, really and substantially present.

Holy Mass, celebrated according to liturgical norms and with an adequate valuation of the richness of its signs and gestures, favors and promotes the growth of Eucharistic faith.

In the Eucharistic celebration, we do not invent anything, but we enter into a reality that precedes us - rather, one that embraces heaven and earth, and therefore, even the past, future and present.

This universal openness, this encounter with all the sons and daughters of God, is the grandeur of the Eucharist: We meet the reality of God who is present in the Body and Blood of the Risen One who is among us.

Therefore, the liturgical prescriptions given by the Church are not external matters, but concretely express this reality of the revelation of the Body and Blood of Christ - prayer reveals the faith according to the ancient principle of lex orandi, lex credendi: we pray as we believe.

Because of this, we can say that "the best catechesis on the Eucharist is the Eucharist itself celebrated well" (Benedict XVI, Post-Synodal Apost. Echortation, Sacramentum caritatis, 64).

It is necessary that in the liturgy, the transcendent dimension emerges with clarity - that of mystery, of encounter with the Divine, which illuminates and elevates even the 'horizontal" link of communion and solidarity that exists among those who belong to the Church.

Indeed, when the latter alone prevails, then one does not fully comprehend the beauty, the profundity and the importance of the mystery that is celebrated.

Dear brothers in the priesthood, the Bishop has entrusted to you, on the day of your episcopal ordination, the task of presiding at the Eucharist.

Always keep to heart the exercise of this mission: to celebrate the divine mysteries with intense interior participation so that the men and women of our time may be sanctified and placed in contact with God, who is absolute truth and eternal love.

Let us also bear in mind that the Eucharist, linked to the Cross and to the Resurrection of the Lord, dictated a new structure for our time. The Risen One showed himself the day after the Sabbath, on the first day of the week, the day of the sun and of creation.

From the beginning, Christians have celebrated their encounter with the Risen One, the Eucharist, on this first day, on this new day of the true sun of history, the Risen Christ. Thus, time always begins anew in the encounter with the Risen One, and this encounter gives content and strength to everyday life.

That is why it is very important for us Christians to follow this new rhythm of time, to meet the Risen One on Sundays and to 'take' with us his presence, which can transform us and transform our time.

Moreover, I invite everyone to rediscover the fruitfulness of Eucharistic Adoration: before the Blessed Sacrament, we experience very specially that 'remaining' with Jesus that he himself, in the Gospel of John, set as a condition for bearing much fruit (cfr Jn 15,5), in order to avoid that our apostolic action be reduced to sterile activism, but is truly a testimony to the love of God.

Communion with Christ is always a communion with his Body which is the Church, as the Apostle Paul reminds us, saying "The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf" (1 Cor 10,16-17).

It is, in fact, the Eucharist that transforms a simple group of persons into a ecclesial community: the Eucharist makes the Church. It is therefore fundamental that the celebration of Holy Mass be, in fact, the culmination, the 'load-bearing structure' for the life of every parochial community.

I call on everyone to take the best care possible - such as through appropriate liturgical groups - of the preparation and celebration of the Eucharist so that all who participate in it may encounter the Lord.

It is the Risen Christ, who makes himself present in our today and assembles us around him. Nourishing himself from him, we are liberated from the bonds of individualism, and through communion with him, we become ourselves, together, one single being, his mystical Body.

Thus all differences due to profession, class, nationality, are overcome, because we find ourselves members of one single great family - that of the children of God, in which each one is given a special grace for common use.

The world and men do not need any other social aggregation, but they need the Church, which is, in Christ, like a sacrament, "that is, the instrument of intimate union with God and the unity of the entire human species" (Conc. Ecum. Vat. ii, Cost. Lumen gentium, 1), called to make the light of the Risen Christ shine on all peoples.

Jesus came to reveal to us the love of the Father, because "a man without love cannot live" (John Paul II, enc, Redemptor hominis, 10). Love is, in fact, the fundamental experience of every human being, which gives meaning to daily life.

Nourished by the Eucharist, we too, following the example of Christ, live for him, to be witnesses to his love. Receiving the Sacrament, we enter into communion with the Blood of Jesus Christ.

In Jewish thinking, blood is life - so we can say that by nourishing ourselves on the Body of Christ, we receive the life of God and learn to look at reality with his eyes, abandoning the logic of the world in order to follow the divine logic of giving and gratuitousness.

St. Augustine recalled that during a vision he seemed to hear the voice of the Lord saying to him: "I am the nourishment of adults. Grow, and you will partake of me as nourishment for your flesh: though I do not transform myself into you, you will be transformed into me" (cfr. Confessions vii, 10, 16).

When we receive Christ, the love of God expands through our intimate being, it radically changes our heart and makes us capable of gestures which, through the diffusive power of good, can transform the life of those around us.

Charity is able to generate authentic and permanent change in society, acting on the hearts and minds of men, and when it is lived in truth, "it is the principal propulsive force for the true development of every person and of all mankind" (Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate, 1).

For the disciple of Christ, testimony of charity is not a fleeting sentiment, but on the contrary, it is that which shapes his life in every circumstance. I encourage everyone, particularly the Caritas organization and the deacons, to commit themselves to the delicate and fundamental area of education in charity, as a permanent dimension of personal and community life.

Our city asks of the disciples of Christ, through their renewed announcement of the Gospel, a clearer and more limpid testimony of charity. It is with the language of love, desirous of the integral good of man, that the Church speaks to the residents of Rome.

In these years of my ministry as your Bishop, I have been able to visit many places where charity is lived intensely. I am grateful to all who are engaged in the various charitable structures, for the dedication and generosity with which they serve the poor and the marginalized.

The needs and the poverty of so many men and women challenge us profoundly: it is Christ himself, who, every day, in the poor, asks us to be relieved of hunger and thirst, to be visited in hospitals and jails, to be listened to, to be clothed.

Celebrating the Eucharist imposes upon us and at the same time makes us capable of becoming, in our turn, the bread that is broken for our brothers when we meet their needs and give of ourselves.

That is why a Eucharistic celebration that does not lead us to meet others where they live, work and suffer, in order to bring them the love of God, does not manifest the truth that it contains.

To be faithful to the mystery that is celebrated on the altar we must, as the apostle Paul exhorts us, offer our bodies, our very selves, in a spiritual sacrifice that is pleasing to God (cfr Rm 12) in circumstances that require our 'I' to die and which constitute our daily 'altar'.

Gestures of sharing create communion, and renew the fabric of inter-personal relationships, imprinting them with gratuitousness and giving, and allow the construction of a civilization of love.

In a time of economic and social crisis like the present, let us be together with those who who live in indigency in order to offer them the hope for a better tomorrow that is worthy of man.

If we really live as disciples of God-Love, then we will help the inhabitants of Rome to discover that they are brothers and sons of one Father.

The nature of love itself requires dfinitive and irrevocable life choices. I address myself especially to you, dearest young people: Do not be afraid to choose love as the supreme rule of life.

Do not be afraid to love Christ in the priesthood, and if you feel the Lord's call in your heart, follow him in this extraordinary adventure of love, abandoning yourself trustfully to him.

Do not be afraid to form Christian families who live in love that is faithful, indissoluble and open to life! Bear witness that love, as Christ lived it and as the Magisterium of the Church teaches, does not take anything away from your happiness, but on the contrary, it gives that profound joy that Christ promised his disciples.

May the Virgin Mary with her maternal intercession accompany the path of our Church in Rome. May Mary, who in a most singular way, lived communion with God and the sacrifice of her own Son on Calvary, obtain for us that we may live the mystery of the Eucharist ever more intensely, piously and consciously, in order to announce the Word and the love that that God has for every man.

Dear friends, I assure you of my prayers, and I impart from the heart the Apostolic Blessing to all. Thank you.

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