The Eucharist -- The Way For the Renewal of the World

Benedict XVI celebrated Corpus Christi in the Lateran Basilica.  Christendom:  the patient and pious logic of love.

Rome (kath.net/as) The Eucharist brings man to Jesus, who in the traces of Christ are capable, to give to one another, and to become a tool of the unity of the human family. This was said by Pope Benedict XVI in his sermon at the Holy Mass of Corpus Christi in the Papal Basilica and Bishops' Church of Rome, St. John Lateran. After the service there was a large crowd of people participating in the Pope's traditional Procession, which concluded with a Eucharistic blessing at the Basilica of St. Maria Maggiore.

In the Eucharist is the complete transformation of the fruits of the earth -- bread and wine -- with the goal, to transform the lives of men and in this way to begin to transform the world, says the Pope, who invited thereon, to think about the mystery of Christ, who through His self-donation on the Cross saved the world and showed the way of salvation.

Everything takes its beginning with the heart of Christ, who thanked and offered God at the Last Super and transformed the meaning of death with the power of his love. From love, Christ took the suffering to death on the Cross and transformed it with an act of giving. This transformation, which the world needs, there it saves it from within, opens it to the dimension of the Kingdom of Heaven. Actually God wants to make this renewal real in the same way for the world, to which Christ is come: "through the way, which Christ is".

For the same reason, God handed over to the world the gift of the Eucharist, to offer the possibility of salvation for every person: "In Christendom it is nothing magic. There are no short cuts", says Benedict XVI., "everything is accomplished by the pious and patient logic of Faith, by which the gentle power of God moves mountains."

For that reason, "God will proceed to renew humanity in history and the Cosmos freeing him from these chains, Whose Sacrament is the Eucharist. Through the consecrated bread and the consecrated wine, in which is body and blood are present, Christ transforms us, so that we are made like Him: he encloses us in his work of salvation and makes us capable through the Grace of the Holy Ghost, to correspond to his logic of the gift to live, as grains of wheat, which are joined to Him and in Him". In this manner these are sewn and ripened in the furrows of history in unity and peace, "which is the goal, to which we are striving after the plan of God."

In order to understand the dynamic of eucharistic Communion, Benedict XVI explained the absolute division from the "Confessions" (VII,10,18) of St. Augustine, as he reported a manner of vision, in which Jesus said to him: "I am the food of grown men, and you shall feed upon me. You will not change me, as the meal is to the body, rather you will be changed as you are transformed into Me."

In the Eucharistic Commuion "we are transformed by Christ Himself, in this manner our individuality is open, freed of its egoism and bound with the person of Christ." So the Eucharist opens man even for others and overcomes all separation.

Whoever recognizes Jesus in the Host, "perceives him also in the brother, who suffers, who hungers and thirsts, the alien, naked, sick and imprisoned; and so recognizes every man; he establishes a concrete way for all in one, who are in need". For that reason the gift of the life of Christ a special responsibility of Christian for the building of solidarity, rights, brotherly society: "especially in our time, in the globalization of a larger interdependence, with which Christendom must be concerned, that this unity can not exist without God, that is to say can not be built without true love."

The Gospel is always a goal toward the unity of the human family, "proceeding from the meaning for mutual responsibility, which we recognize in the limits of our bodies, the body of Christ, which we have learned in the Sacrament of the Altar and continue to learn that the common part, that love is the way of true justice."

Link to Kathnet...here..

H/t: priest's secretary...