Pope Francis on the Eucharist
“Regarding the Holy Mass, one sometimes hears this objection: “Of what use is Mass? I go to Church when I feel like it, and I pray better in solitude”. But the Eucharist is not a private prayer or a beautiful spiritual exercise, it is not a simple commemoration of what Jesus did at the Last Supper. We say, in order to fully understand, that the Eucharist is “a remembrance”, that is, a gesture which renders real and present the event of Jesus’ death and resurrection: the bread really is his Body given up for us, the wine really is his Blood poured out for us.”
“The Eucharist is Jesus himself who gives himself entirely to us. Nourishing ourselves of Him and abiding in Him through Eucharistic Communion, if we do so with faith, transforms our life, transforms it into a gift to God and to our brothers and sisters. Nourishing ourselves of that ‘Bread of Life’ means entering into harmony with the heart of Christ, assimilating his choices, his thoughts, his behaviour. It means entering into a dynamism of love and becoming people of peace, people of forgiveness, of reconciliation, of sharing in solidarity. The very things that Jesus did.”
“Jesus says: ‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him’. That ‘abiding’: Jesus in us and we in Jesus. Communion is assimilation: partaking of Him, we become as He is. This requires our ‘yes’, our adherence of faith.”
POPE FRANCIS, ANGELUS address, Saint Peter’s Square, Sunday, 16 August 2015
Pope Francis elevates the Eucharist as he celebrates Mass on the feast of Corpus Christi outside the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome June 19. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) (June 19, 2014) See POPE-PROCESSION and POPE-CORPUSCHRISTI June 19, 2014
