John Paul II Convokes "Year of the Eucharist" [October 2004 to October 2005]

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 10, 2004 (Zenit.org).- On the feast of Corpus Christ, John Paul II announced a "Year of the Eucharist" that the Catholic Church will observe from October 2004 to October 2005.

At the Mass he presided over today in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the Pope explained that the Year of the Eucharist will begin with the International Eucharistic Congress, Oct. 10-17, in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The year "will end with the next ordinary assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which will be held in the Vatican from October 2-29, 2005, and whose theme will be 'The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church,'" the Holy Father added.

John Paul II, who reminded the faithful that the "Church lives from the Eucharist," has made this sacrament the focus of his pastoral concern, as reflected in his 2003 encyclical, "Ecclesia de Eucharistia."

"Christ, 'the living bread which came down from heaven,' is the only one who can satisfy man's hunger at all times and in all parts of the earth," he said.

In the Eucharist, "Christ gives his Body and Blood for the life of humanity. And all those who nourish themselves worthily at his table, become living instruments of his presence of love, mercy and peace," the Pope explained.

As has been the custom since the beginning of this pontificate, at the end of the Mass John Paul II presided over the procession of the Eucharist from the Basilica of St. John Lateran to that of St. Mary Major.

Corpus Christi Novena

Novena Honoring the Body and Blood of Christ

I thank You, Jesus, my Divine Redeemer, for coming upon the earth for our sake, and for instituting the adorable Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist in order to remain with us until the end of the world.
I thank You for hiding beneath the Eucharistic species Your infinite majesty and beauty, which Your Angels delight to behold, so that I might have courage to approach the throne of Your Mercy.
I thank You, most loving Jesus, for having made Your- self my food, and for uniting me to Yourself with so much love in this wonderful Sacrament that I may live in You.
I thank You, my Jesus, for giving Yourself to me in this Blessed Sacrament, and so enriching it with the treasures of Your love that You have no greater gift to give me.
I thank You not only for becoming my food but also for offering Yourself as a continual sacrifice to Your Eternal Father for my salvation.
I thank You, Divine Priest, for offering Yourself as a Sacrifice daily upon our altars in adoration and homage to the Most Blessed Trinity, and for making amends for our poor and miserable adorations.
I thank You for renewing in this daily Sacrifice the actual Sacrifice of the Cross offered on Calvary, in which You satisfy Divine justice for us poor sinners.
I thank You, dear Jesus, for having become the priceless Victim to merit for me the fullness of heavenly favors. Awaken in me such confidence in You that their fullness may descend ever more fruitfully upon my soul.
I thank You for offering Yourself in thanksgiving to God for all His benefits, spiritual and temporal, which He has bestowed upon me.
In union with Your offering of Yourself to Your Father in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, I ask for this special favor: (Mention your request).
If it be Your holy Will, grant my request. Through You I also hope to receive the grace of perseverance in Your love and faithful service, a holy death, and a happy
eternity with You in Heaven. Amen.

O Lord, You have given us this Sacred Banquet, in which Christ is received, the memory of His Passion is renewed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us.
You have given them bread from Heaven.
Having all sweetness within.
Let us pray. God our Father, for Your glory and our salvation You appointed Jesus Christ eternal High Priest. May the people He gained for You by His Blood come to share in the power of His Cross and Resurrection by celebrating His Memorial in this Eucharist, for He lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever. Amen.

O Jesus, since You have left us a remembrance of Your Passion beneath the veils of this Sacrament, grant us, we pray, so to venerate the sacred mysteries of Your Body and Blood that we may always enjoy the fruits of Your Redemption, for You live and reign forever. Amen.

The day before his death on the Cross, Christ instituted the Eucharist in the Upper Room. He also offered bread and wine, which "in his sacred hands" (Roman Canon) became his Body and his Blood, offered in sacrifice. Thus he fulfilled the prophecy of the old covenant linked to Melchizedek's sacrificial offering. For this very reason—the Letter to the Hebrews recalls—"he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek" (5:7-10).

A Gift for the World

A Gift for the World
How the Eucharist Can Change Our Hearts--And Change History

By the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the church was born and set out upon the pathways of the world, yet a decisive moment in her taking shape was certainly the institution of the Eucharist in the Upper Room. Her foundation and wellspring is the whole Easter Triduum, but this is as it were gathered up, foreshadowed, and concentrated for ever in the gift of the Eucharist. With it Jesus brought about a mysterious "oneness in time" between that Triduum and the passage of the centuries.

My Experience of the Eucharist. The thought of this leads us to profound amazement and gratitude. In the paschal event and the Eucharist that makes it present throughout the centuries, there is a truly enormous "capacity" that embraces all of history. I would like to rekindle this Eucharistic "amazement." How could I not feel the need to urge everyone to experience it ever anew?

When I think of the Eucharist and look at my life as a priest, as a bishop, and as the successor of Peter, I naturally recall the many times and places in which I was able to celebrate it. I remember the parish church of Niegowi´c , where I had my first pastoral assignment; the collegiate church of Saint Florian in Krakow; Wawel Cathedral; Saint Peter's Basilica; and so many basilicas and churches in Rome and throughout the world. I have been able to celebrate Holy Mass in chapels built along mountain paths, on lakeshores, and seacoasts; I have celebrated it on altars built in stadiums and in city squares. This varied scenario has given me a powerful experience of its universal and, so to speak, cosmic character.

Yes, cosmic! Because even when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world. It unites heaven and earth. It embraces and permeates all creation. The Son of God became man in order to restore all creation, in one supreme act of praise, to the One who made it from nothing. He, the eternal high priest who by the blood of his cross entered the eternal sanctuary, thus gives back to the Creator and Father all creation redeemed. Truly this is the mystery of faith that is accomplished in the Eucharist: The world that came forth from the hands of God the Creator now returns to him redeemed by Christ.

Receive the Holy Spirit. The Church has received the Eucharist from Christ her Lord not as one gift-however precious-among so many others, but as the gift par excellence, for it is the gift of himself as well as the gift of his saving work. What more could Jesus have done for us? Truly, in the Eucharist, he shows us a love that goes "to the end" (John 13:1), a love that knows no measure.

Through our communion in his body and blood, Christ also grants us his Spirit. Saint Ephrem writes: "He called the bread his living body and he filled it with himself and his Spirit. . . . He who eats it with faith, eats Fire and Spirit. . . . Take and eat this, all of you, and eat with it the Holy Spirit. For it is truly my body and whoever eats it will have eternal life."

The Church implores this divine Gift, the source of every other gift, in the Eucharistic Prayer. In the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, for example, we find the prayer: "We beseech, implore and beg you: Send your Holy Spirit upon us all and upon these gifts . . . that those who partake of them may be purified in soul, receive the forgiveness of their sins, and share in the Holy Spirit." And in the Roman Missal the celebrant prays: "Grant that we who are nourished by his body and blood may be filled with his Holy Spirit, and become one body, one spirit in Christ." Thus by the gift of his body and blood, Christ increases within us the gift of his Spirit, already poured out in Baptism and bestowed as a "seal" in the Sacra-ment of Confirmation.

The Eucharist in the World. It is not by chance that the Eucharistic Prayers honor Mary, the angels, the apostles, the martyrs, and all the saints. In celebrating the sacrifice of the Lamb, we are united to the heavenly "liturgy" and become part of that great multitude which cries out: "Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb" (Revelation 7:10)! The Eucharist is truly a glorious ray of the heavenly Jerusalem which pierces the clouds of our history and lights up our journey.

A significant consequence of this truth is the fact that it plants a seed of living hope in our daily commitment to the work before us. Certainly the Christian vision leads to the expectation of "new heavens" and "a new earth" (Revelation 21:1), but this increases, rather than lessens, our sense of responsibility for the world today. I want to reaffirm this forcefully at the beginning of the new millennium, so that Christians will feel more obliged than ever not to neglect their duties as citizens in this world. Theirs is the task of contributing with the light of the Gospel to the building of a more human world, a world fully in harmony with God's plan.

Many problems darken the horizon of our time. We need but think of the urgent need to work for peace, to base relationships on solid premises of justice and solidarity, and to defend human life from conception to its natural end. And what should we say of the thousand inconsistencies of a "globalized" world where the weakest, the most powerless, and the poorest appear to have so little hope! It is in this world that Christian hope must shine forth!

Significantly, in their account of the Last Supper, the synoptics recount the institution of the Eucharist, while the Gospel of John relates, as a way of bringing out its profound meaning, the account of the washing of the feet, in which Jesus appears as the teacher of communion and of service (John 13:1-20). Proclaiming the death of the Lord "until he comes" (1 Corin-thians 11:26) entails that all who take part in the Eucharist be committed to changing their lives and making them in a certain way completely "Eucharistic." It is this fruit of a transfigured existence and a commitment to transforming the world in accordance with the Gospel that illustrates the eschatological tension inherent in the celebration of the Eucharist and in the Christian life as a whole: "Come, Lord Jesus!" (Revelation 22:20).

The Church's Treasure. For over a half century, every day, beginning on 2 November 1946, when I celebrated my first Mass, my eyes have gazed in recollection upon the host and the chalice, where time and space in some way "merge" and the drama of Golgotha is re-presented in a living way. Each day my faith has been able to recognize in the consecrated bread and wine the divine Wayfarer who joined the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and opened their eyes to the light and their hearts to new hope (Luke 24:13-35).

Allow me, dear brothers and sisters, to share my own testimony of faith in the Most Holy Eucharist. Here is the Church's treasure, the heart of the world, the pledge of the fulfillment for which each man and woman, even unconsciously, yearns. Here our senses fail us; yet faith alone, rooted in the word of Christ handed down to us by the apostles, is sufficient. Allow me, like Peter, to say once more to Christ, in the name of the whole Church and in the name of each of you: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (John 6:68).

At the dawn of this third millennium, we, the children of the Church, are called to undertake with renewed enthusiasm the journey of Christian living. Ultimately, it has its center in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved, and imitated so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem.

Every commitment to holiness, every activity aimed at carrying out the Church's mission, every work of pastoral planning, must draw the strength it needs from the Eucharistic mystery and in turn be directed to that mystery as its culmination.

In the humble signs of bread and wine, changed into his body and blood, Jesus walks beside us as our strength and our food for the journey, and he enables us to become, for everyone, witnesses of hope. If, in the presence of this mystery, reason experiences its limits, still the heart, enlightened by the grace of the Holy Spirit, sees the response that is demanded and so bows low in adoration and unbounded love.

This article has been adapted from Pope John Paul II's 2003 encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia.

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