Benedict XVI
Need for a Personal Encounter with Jesus
Eucharistic Congress, June 17, 2012. Ireland
Excerpts and comments -Full text of pope
Vatican II + personal encounter with Jesus
The renewal of external forms, desired by the Council Fathers, was intended to make it easier to enter into the inner depth of the mystery. Its true purpose was to lead people to a personal encounter with the Lord, present in the Eucharist, and thus with the living God, so that through this contact with Christ’s love, the love of his brothers and sisters for one another might also grow. Yet not infrequently, the revision of liturgical forms has remained at an external level, and "active participation" has been confused with external activity. Hence much still remains to be done on the path of real liturgical renewal. In a changed world, increasingly fixated on material things, we must learn to recognize anew the mysterious presence of the Risen Lord, which alone can give breadth and depth to our life.
How to celebrate Mass
The Eucharist is the worship of the whole Church, but it also requires the full engagement of each individual Christian in the Church’s mission; it contains a call to be the holy people of God, but also one to individual holiness; it is to be celebrated with great joy and simplicity, but also as worthily and reverently as possible; it invites us to repent of our sins, but also to forgive our brothers and sisters; it binds us together in the Spirit, but it also commands us in the same Spirit to bring the good news of salvation to others.
Moreover, the Eucharist is the memorial of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, his body and blood given in the new and eternal covenant for the forgiveness of sins and the transformation of the world... You are the heirs to a Church that has been a mighty force for good in the world, and which has given a profound and enduring love of Christ and his blessed Mother to many, many others.
Comment: Do we enter the mass worthily and reverently? Do we ask for self knowledge so that we can repent of our sins? Do we forgive? We shall enter the Mass to die with Him. We must enter the covenant by personally joining the sacrifice of Christ at the Cross, where He gives us His body and blood. Each of us must partake, by giving our own body and blood, united to His, so that He can transform us and make us holy. Suffer all with Him, no longer two but one, in His sacrifice of love. We must then engage in the mission with His passion burning in our hearts. His forgiveness and Thus at Mass we are
Sin as a habit and the remedy
Thankfulness and joy at such a great history of faith and love have recently been shaken in an appalling way by the revelation of sins committed by priests and consecrated persons against people entrusted to their care. Instead of showing them the path towards Christ, towards God, instead of bearing witness to his goodness, they abused people and undermined the credibility of the Church’s message. How are we to explain the fact that people who regularly received the Lord’s body and confessed their sins in the sacrament of Penance have offended in this way?
It remains a mystery. Yet evidently, their Christianity was no longer nourished by joyful encounter with Jesus Christ: it had become merely a matter of habit. The work of the Council was really meant to overcome this form of Christianity and to rediscover the faith as a deep personal friendship with the goodness of Jesus Christ. The Eucharistic Congress has a similar aim. Here we wish to encounter the Risen Lord. We ask him to touch us deeply. May he who breathed on the Apostles at Easter, communicating his Spirit to them, likewise bestow upon us his breath, the power of the Holy Spirit, and so help us to become true witnesses to his love, witnesses to the truth. His truth is love. Christ’s love is truth.
Commentary: The pope warns of the grave danger of receiving the Sacraments merely as a habit. Habit is a drift away from God and putting ourselves first. We grow cold, we loose intimacy with Christ. We all have this inclination and we all must fight it. If not, we will be driven by our own desires, we are gradually distracted even by good things, we loose focus of priorities (our commitment to be all for God). Then we do not think as God thinks but as men do. Then we are manipulated by the devil into sin.
Remedy: We need a constant turning towards God. Christianity is to be lived in communities where life in the Spirit is strongly supported, where we are challenged to cultivate the joyful encounter with Christ.
We are in community (Love Crucified) to be one with the Lord in His sacrifice of love. He takes us in this path as a way of life which is constantly before us as we gather to pray and to ponder the teaching. We have the grace of having brothers and sisters who are in the same journey and who are committed to support and to correct us in this journey. We live the personal encounter with HIM as a spiritual family. Even so, we must remember our frailty and gratefully live the gift we have received.
