HOMILY ON THE FEAST OF CORPUS DOMINI, 6/7/07
Here is a translation of the Holy Father's homily:
Dear brothers and sisters!
A short while ago, we sang in the Sequence: "
Dogma datur christianis, / quod in carnem transit panis, / et vinum in sanguinem" - For us Christians it is certain: Bread is transformed to flesh and wine to blood.
We reaffirm today with great joy our faith in the Eucharist, the mystery which constitutes the heart of the Church. In the recent post-Synodal exhortation
Sacramentum caritatis, I wrote that the Eucharistic mystery "is the gift that Jesus Christ makes of himself, revealing himself as God's infinite love for man" (n. 1).
That is why Corpus Domini is a singular feast and is an important occasion of faith and praise in very Christian community. It is a feast that had its origin in a specific historical and cultural context. It was born with the specific purpose of openly reaffirming the faith of the People of God in Jesus Christ who lives and is really present in the most blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.
It is a feast to publicly adore, praise and thank the Lord who "in the Eucharistic sacrament continues to love us 'to the very end', up to the gift of his own body and blood" (
Sacramentum caritatis, 1).
The eucharistic celebration tonight brings us back to the spiritual climate of Maundy Thursday, the day on which Christ, on the eve of his passion, instituted the most holy Eucharist in the Cenacle. Thus Corpus Domini is a reprise of the mystery of Maundy Thursday, almost a literal obedience to Jesus's call to 'proclaim on the rooftops' what he had transmitted in secret (cfr Mt 10,27).
The Apostles received the gift of the Eucharist from the Lord in the intimacy of the Last Supper, but it was destined for all, for the entire world. That it is why the Eucharist is proclaimed and exposed openly, so that everyone may encounter "Jesus who walks by' as he did through the roads of Galilee, Samaria and Judea, so that everyone, receiving it, may be made whole and renewed with the strength of His love.
This, dear friends, is the perpetual living legacy that Jesus has left us in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. A legacy that demands to be constantly rethought, revisited, so that, as the venerated Paul VI said, it may "imprint its inexhaustible effect on all the days of our mortal life" (Teachings, V([967], p. 779).
In the post-Synodal exhortation, commenting on the priest's exclamation after Consecration: "Mystery of the faith!", I observed that with these words, he "proclaims the mystery being celebrated and shows his wonder before the substantial conversion of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord Jesus, a reality that passes all human comprehension" (n. 6).
Precisely because we are dealing with a mysterious reality that passes our understanding, we should not wonder that even today, many find it difficult to accept the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It cannot be otherwise. It has been that way since that day in which, at the synagogue in Capharnaum, Jesus openly declared that he had come to give us his flesh and blood as nourishment (cfr Jn 6,26-58).
The words appeared hard to take, and many indeed turned away. Then as now, the Eucharist remains 'a sign of contradiction" and it cannot be otherwise, because a God who takes on human flesh and sacrifices himself for the life of the world places man's wisdom in crisis.
But with humble trust, the Church assumes the faith of Peter and the other Apostles, and with them proclaims, as we proclaim, "Lord, who would we go to? You have the words of eternal life" (Jn 6,68).
Let us renew ourselves tonight this profession of faith in Christ who lives and is present in the Eucharist. Yes, "for us Christians, it is certain - bread becomes flesh and wine becomes blood."
We sing, in the culminating point of the Sequence , "
Ecce panis angelorum, / factus cibus viatorum: / vere panis filiorum" - Here is the bread of angels, bread of pilgrims, true bread for the children."
Through God's grace, we are his children. The Eucharist is the food reserved for those who in Baptism were freed from slavery and became children - it is the food that sustains them in the long road of exodus through the desert of human existence.
Like the manna for the people of Israel, the Eucharist has been for every generation of Christians, the indispensable nourishment which sustains them while they go through the desert of the world, bled dry by economic and ideological systems which do not promote life bur rather mortify it; a world in which the logic of power and possession dominates rather than that of service and love; a world where often the culture of violence and death triumphs.
But Jesus comes to us and give us security: He himself is the Bread of Life (Jn 6,35,48). He says this in the chant of the Gospel: "I am the living bread descended from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live in eternity" (cfr Jn 6,51).
In the Gospel passage proclaimed earlier, St. Luke, narrating the miracle of the multiplication of five loaves and two fishes with which Jesus fed the crowd 'in an arid zone', concludes by saying, "Everyone ate and had his fill" (cfr Lc 9, 11b-17).
I would like to underline first of all this world 'everyone'. It was indeed the Lord's wish that every human being be nourished by the Eucharist, because the Eucharist is for all.
If on Maundy Thursday, the close relationship between the Last Supper and the mystery of Christ's death on the Cross was made evident, today, the feast of Corpus Domini, with the procession and the communal adoration of the Eucharist, calls attention to the fact that Christ immolated himself for all humanity.
His passage among the houses and through the streets of our city will be for those who live here an offering of joy, of immortal life, of peace and of love.
In the Gospel today, a second element leaps to view: the miracle done by the Lord contains an explicit invitation to each one to offer his own contribution. The five loaves and the two fishes stand for our contribution, humble but necessary, that he transforms into a gift of love for all.
"Christ even now", I wrote in the exhortation, "continues to exhort his disciples to be personally involved" (n. 88). The Eucharist is a call to sanctity and to giving oneself to our brothers, because "the calling for each of us is that of being, together with Jesus, bread that is shared for the life of the world" (ibid.).
Our Redeemer addresses this invitation particularly to us, dear brothers and sisters of Rome, gathered tonight around the Eucharist in this historic Piazza. I salute you all with affection.
I greet, above all, the Cardinal Vicar and the Auxiliary Bishops, the other venerated brother cardinals and bishops, as well as the numerous priests and deacons, religious and so many faithful laymen.
At the end of the Eucharistic celebration, we will join in procession, almost as though carrying the Lord through all the streets and quarters of Rome. We will immerse him, so to speak, in the daily routine of our life, so that He walks where we walk, so that He lives where we live.
Indeed we know, as the Apostle Paul reminds us in his Letter to the Corinthians, that in every Eucharistic celebration, as this one tonight, we "announce the death of the Lord until He comes"(cfr Cor 11,26). We walk through the roads of the world knowing that we have Him beside us, sustained by the hope of one day seeing his face revealed in our definitive encounter.
Meanwhile we hear his voice which repeats, as we read in the Book of the Apocalypse: "I am knocking at your door. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come to him, I will sup with him and he with me" (Ap 3,20).
The feast of Corpus Domini is meant to make us perceive this knocking by the Lord, even if we have become interiorly hard of hearing. Jesus knocks on the door of our heart and asks to come in not just for a day but for always.
Let us welcome him with joy, raising to him the choral invocation of the Liturgy: "Good Shepherd, true bread,/o Jesus,. have mercy on us (...)/ You who know everything and can do everything,/ who feeds us on earth,/ lead your brothers/ to the feast in heaven/ in the joy of your saints." Amen.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/06/2007 16:51]