PAUL VI

HOMILY OF POPE PAUL VI

Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 17 June 1965

Venerable Brothers and Faithful

you who have taken part in this solemn rite; and you, Our citizens and children, who live in this very new neighbourhood of Rome!

You have certainly noticed that for the first time the Roman feast of Corpus Christi is holding its traditional public procession in this marginal part of the City; and you may have guessed that the choice of the neighbourhood was intended to indicate some particular intention. What intention? A manifold intention!

That of first highlighting, of placing in honour, among these beautiful houses and among these monumental buildings the silent, mysterious and loving presence of the Lord: Habitavit in nobis, He dwelt among us, says the Gospel (I. 1:14). This permanence, this coexistence still lasts, multiplied in the sacramental prodigy on how many altars the holy sacrifice of the Mass is celebrated, in how many tabernacles the Eucharist is kept. Here, too, He has His abode, a tenant, a citizen, like those who have their abode here; your companion, your colleague, your guest, your friend, who shares your life, tacitly, covertly; but of nothing else interested, than of your spiritual life; of nothing else desirous, than of your conversation, your communion with Him. Lest it be said again as in the Gospel: "In the midst of you dwells One whom you do not know" (I. 1, 26), this solemn worship is celebrated here. Inhabitants of this neighbourhood! Recognise Christ alive and present in your midst; and think how everyday, profane life can be as if magnetised, illuminated, comforted, sanctified for those who with simplicity of faith know how to capture the mystical radiations of the divine Brother.

Thus, this intention of unveiling and honouring the presence of the heavenly pilgrim, who also makes his human and temporal station here, is integrated with another, which you will appreciate; that of better spiritually associating this new and magnificent peripheral portion of the new Rome to the ancient and glorious Urbe, not only with the registry, technical and administrative constraints of modern town planning, but also with those of religious, normal and pontifical life, proper to the centre of Catholicism. Romans you are, citizens of EUR; but what Romans would you be, if the splendid spirituality of the Roman Catholic faith were not fully extended to this splendid district?

And here the intention of promoting this religious event shows you another of Our purposes; the fulfilment of one of Our urgent duties: that of offering you tangible proof that the Pope of Rome is no less for you your Bishop than he is for every other parish district of the City and of the Roman Diocese, which sees in him - as you, to your comfort and pride, wish to see - the successor of St Peter and the Vicar of Christ. Your Bishop also wishes to bring his message of faith and charity here. Combined with the cultic and liturgical intention, therefore, of paying an act of sovereign homage to Christ, Our intention becomes pastoral; it is addressed to you, in order to grant you the consolation of greeting you as Our children, of summoning you as brothers, of blessing you as faithful; and to give you the opportunity to know Us personally, and to consider Us as yours, and to your good directly interested and dedicated.

And no other circumstance can serve this community purpose better than this one, because no other moment of religious life is more propitious to awaken in a population the sense of its profound solidarity, indeed to instil the charisma of its real, albeit mystical, unity, than the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

Always remember: the Eucharist is the sacrament of Christian communion. We would like this to be the special memory of this memorable ceremony. It is the sacrament of vital union with Christ, who gave his life for us, and who precisely clothed himself with the signs of bread and wine to represent to us his sacrifice, that of his body and blood, and to make it possible for us to participate in the redemptive virtue of his sacrifice itself, making himself our spiritual and real nourishment. Vital union, personal therefore, intended to nourish the most intimate and profound individual religiosity; but social also, because it is intended at the same time to introduce into every human existence, a participant in so much Sacrament, a principle of life identical for all; to offer to each one that same bread, which makes the diners one, one body with Christ (cf. 1 Cor 10:17).

We are easily led to consider this Sacrament, because of the mystery that it contains and that surrounds it, because of the reverence that is due to it and that sets it apart from all profane noise and all common contact, almost isolated and extraneous to the experience of lived life and the circulation of social relationships. That to the Sacrament of the Lord's presence among us is due every regard, every reverence, and not only outwardly (cf. 1 Cor. 2, 30-31), is all well and good; but it would be incomplete our religious information, and our social conscience would be deprived of its best resource, if we forgot that the Eucharist is intended for our human conversation, as well as for our Christian sanctification; it is instituted so that we may become brothers; It is celebrated by the Priest, minister of the Christian community, so that from being strangers, scattered, and indifferent to one another, we may become united, equal, and friends; it is given to us, so that from being an apathetic, selfish mass, a people divided and adversary, we may become a people, a true people, believing and loving, of one heart and one soul (cf. Act. 4, 32). Let us repeat the holy and famous exclamations: 'O sacramentum pietatis! O signum unitatis! O vinculum caritatis!" (S. Aug., In Io. Tract. 26, 13; P.L. 35, 1613). Now, dearest brothers and sons, all this has a twofold importance: that of showing us how the Eucharist is the marvellous cause of the unification of believers, with Jesus Christ and among themselves; this is affirmed with his usual incisive clarity by Our ancient and great predecessor, St. Leo the Great: "Non . . . aliud agit participatio corporis et sanguinis Christi, quam ut in id quod sumimus transeamus": to nothing else does our participation in the body and blood of Christ tend, than to transform us into what we assume" (Sermo 63, 7; P.L. 54, 357). The true and complete unity of the faithful members of the Church is the result of their participation in the Eucharist. And secondly, this communion of faith, of charity, of supernatural life, deriving from the Sacrament that signifies and produces it, can have an enormous and incomparably beneficial reflection on the temporal sociality of men. You know how this fundamental problem of human sociality excels among all in our time, and dominates all others with the ideologies, policies, cultures, organisations, with which the men of our time work, toil, dream and suffer, to create the earthly city, the new and ideal society; And we all know how, in this manifold endeavour, men, engaged in the immense construction, often succeed in making remarkable progress worthy of admiration and support, but at every step they find within themselves obstacles and opposition that become divisions, struggles and wars, precisely because they lack a single and transcendent unifying principle of the human structure, and lack sufficient moral energy to give it the cohesion that is as free and conscious as it is solid and happy, as befits true men. 

The earthly city lacks that supplement of faith and love, which it cannot find in itself and from itself; and which the religious city existing in it, the Church, can, without in any way offending the autonomy of the earthly city, indeed its just secularity, can, by tacit osmosis of example and spiritual virtue, in no small measure, confer on it.

And let this be Our vow at the end of this solemn rite in honour of the Sacrament capable of making men brothers. You, citizens of this modern neighbourhood, have here an illustrious type of new and ideal city: do not let it lack the inner animation, which can make it truly unanimous, good and happy; that which comes to it from the source of the Catholic faith, lived in the communal celebration of the Eucharistic liturgy. Never fail to attend this festive gathering, which spiritually unifies and sublimates the city's population, which still lacks sufficient inner cohesive cement and perfect communal concert, invigorating and consoling; become a family around the altar of Christ, become the People of God!

And we shall leave this vow to those who preside over and provide for the religious life of the district, so that they may know how to worthily fulfil the ministry entrusted to them with a spirit of pastoral goodness and priestly sacrifice.

We shall leave it to the civil authorities of the City, whom we know to be so worthy and so dedicated to the development and splendour of this district.

We will leave it to the Knights of Labour, great agents of modern progress, and thoughtful scholars of social developments, claimed by the not yet perfect conditions of the working classes in our country. To these well-deserving and typical architects of civil and economic well-being, who have welcomed Us for the excellent crowning of this ceremony, go, with thanksgiving for so much of their courtesy, Our wish for ever new, civil and spiritual ascensions. But to you especially, faithful of Our Rome, and to you citizens of EUR, we leave Our vow, which we now wholeheartedly intend to validate with the Eucharistic Blessing.

HOMILY OF POPE PAUL VI

Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 17 June 1965

JOHN PAUL II

Ecclesia de Eucharistia vivit

1. "Ecclesia de Eucharistia vivit - The Church lives by the Eucharist". With these words begins the Encyclical Letter on the Eucharist, which I signed last Holy Thursday, during the Mass in Cena Domini. Today's Solemnity of Corpus Christi recalls that evocative celebration, making us relive the intense atmosphere of the Last Supper.

"Take, this is my body... This is my blood" (Mk 14:22-24). Let us listen again to Jesus' words as he offers the disciples the bread that has become his Body, and the wine that has become his Blood. He thus inaugurates the new Easter rite: the Eucharist is the sacrament of the new and eternal Covenant.

With those gestures and words, Christ brings to completion the long pedagogy of the ancient rites, recalled earlier in the First Reading (cf. Ex 24:3-8).

2. The Church constantly returns to the Upper Room as the place of her birth. He returns because the Eucharistic gift establishes a mysterious "contemporaneity" between the Lord's Passover and the becoming of the world and generations (cf. Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 5).

This evening too, with deep gratitude to God, we pause in silence before the mystery of faith - mysterium fidei. We contemplate him with that intimate feeling that in the Encyclical I called "Eucharistic amazement" (ibid., 6). Great and grateful amazement before the Sacrament in which Christ wanted to "concentrate" forever all his mystery of love (cf. ibid., 5).

We contemplate the Eucharistic face of Christ, as did the Apostles and, later, the saints throughout the ages. We contemplate it especially by placing ourselves in the school of Mary, "a 'Eucharistic' woman with her whole life" (ibid., 53), she who was "the first 'tabernacle' in history" (ibid., 55).

3. This is the meaning of the beautiful tradition of Corpus Christi that is renewed this evening. With it also the Church that is in Rome manifests its constitutive bond with the Eucharist, professing with joy to "live of the Eucharist".

His Bishop, the Successor of Peter, and his Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood live by the Eucharist; Religious men and women, consecrated laity and all the baptised live by the Eucharist.

Of the Eucharist live, in particular, Christian families, to whom the Diocesan Ecclesial Convention was dedicated a few days ago. Dear families of Rome! May Christ's living Eucharistic presence nourish in you the grace of marriage and enable you to progress along the path of conjugal and family holiness. Draw from this source the secret of your unity and love, imitating the example of the blessed married couple Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi, who began their days by approaching the Eucharistic banquet.

4. After the Holy Mass we will walk praying and singing towards the Basilica of St Mary Major. With this procession we wish to express symbolically our being pilgrims, "viatores", towards the heavenly homeland.

We are not alone in our pilgrimage: with us walks Christ, bread of life, "panis angelorum, / factus cibus viatorum - bread of angels, / bread of pilgrims" (Sequence).

Jesus, spiritual food that nourishes the hope of believers, sustains us on this journey to Heaven and strengthens our communion with the heavenly Church.

The Most Holy Eucharist, a glimpse of Paradise opening on earth, penetrates the clouds of our history. As a ray of glory of the heavenly Jerusalem, it casts light on our path (cf. Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 19).

5. "Ave, verum corpus natum de Maria Virgine": Hail, true body of Christ, born of the Virgin Mary!

The soul pours out in astonished adoration before such a sublime Mystery.

"Vere passum, immolatum in cruce pro homine. From your death on the Cross, O Lord, springs forth for us the life that does not die.

"Esto nobis praegustatum mortis in examine". Grant, O Lord, that each of us, nourished by Thee, may face with confident hope every trial of life, until the day when Thou shalt be our viaticum for the last journey, towards the Father's house.

"O Iesu dulcis! O Iesu pie! O Iesu, fili Mariae! - O sweet Jesus! O pious Jesus! O Jesus, Son of Mary!"

Amen.

[Pope John Paul II, 19 June 2003].

BENEDICT

What does the soul desire more ardently than the truth?

1. Sacrament of charity, the Most Holy Eucharist is the gift that Jesus Christ makes of himself, revealing to us God's infinite love for every man. In this admirable Sacrament is manifested the "greatest" love, that which impels one to "lay down one's life for one's friends" (Jn 15:13). For Jesus "loved them to the end" (Jn 13:1). With this expression, the Evangelist introduces the gesture of infinite humility He made: before dying on the cross for us, putting a towel around His hips, He washed the feet of His disciples. Likewise, Jesus in the Eucharistic Sacrament continues to love us "to the end", even to the point of the gift of his body and blood. What awe must have gripped the hearts of the Apostles at the Lord's gestures and words during that Supper! What wonder the Eucharistic Mystery must arouse in our hearts too!

The food of truth

2. In the Sacrament of the altar, the Lord comes to meet man, created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen 1:27), making himself his companion. For in this Sacrament, the Lord becomes food for man who hungers for truth and freedom. Since only the truth can truly set us free (cf. Jn 8:36), Christ makes himself the food of truth for us. With acute knowledge of human reality, St Augustine highlighted how man moves spontaneously, and not by compulsion, when he finds himself in relation to what attracts him and arouses desire in him. Asking himself, then, what can ultimately move man in his innermost being, the holy Bishop exclaims: ''What does the soul desire more ardently than truth? ". Every man, in fact, carries within himself the irrepressible desire for the ultimate and definitive truth. For this reason, the Lord Jesus, "the way, the truth and the life" (Jn 14:6), addresses himself to the yearning heart of man, who feels like a pilgrim and thirsty, to the heart that sighs for the source of life, to the begging heart of Truth. Jesus Christ, in fact, is the Truth made Person, who attracts the world to Himself. "Jesus is the pole star of human freedom: without Him, it loses its bearings, for without knowledge of the truth, freedom becomes distorted, isolated, and reduced to sterile arbitrariness. With Him, freedom is found". In the sacrament of the Eucharist, Jesus shows us in particular the truth of love, which is the very essence of God. It is this evangelical truth that concerns every man and the whole man. This is why the Church, which finds its vital centre in the Eucharist, is constantly committed to proclaiming to all, importunate oppositions (cf. 2 Tim 4:2), that God is love. Precisely because Christ became the food of Truth for us, the Church turns to man, inviting him to freely accept the gift of God.

[Sacramentum Caritatis].

FRANCIS

Jesus sends his disciples to go and prepare the place to celebrate the Paschal supper. It was they who asked: "Master, where do you want us to go to prepare so that you may eat the Passover?" (Mk 14:12). As we contemplate and adore the Lord's presence in the Eucharistic Bread, we too are called to ask ourselves: in what "place" do we want to prepare the Lord's Passover? What are the "places" in our lives where God asks us to be hosted? I would like to answer these questions by dwelling on three images from the Gospel we have heard (Mk 14:12-16.22-26).

The first is the man carrying a pitcher of water (cf. v. 13). It is a detail that would seem superfluous. But that completely anonymous man becomes the guide for the disciples who search for the place that will later be called the Upper Room. And the jug of water is the sign of recognition: a sign that makes us think of thirsty humanity, always in search of a source of water to quench its thirst and regenerate it. All of us walk through life with a jug in our hand: each of us thirsts for love, for joy, for a successful life in a more human world. And for this thirst, the water of worldly things is of no use, because it is a deeper thirst, which only God can satisfy.

Let us follow this symbolic 'signal' again. Jesus tells his disciples that where a man with a jug of water will lead them, there the Passover Supper can be celebrated. To celebrate the Eucharist, therefore, one must first of all recognise one's thirst for God: to feel in need of Him, to desire His presence and His love, to be aware that we cannot do it alone but need a Food and a Drink of eternal life to sustain us on our journey. The drama of today - we can say - is that the thirst has often been quenched. Questions about God have been extinguished, the desire for Him has faded, seekers of God are becoming rarer and rarer. God no longer attracts because we no longer feel our deep thirst. But only where there is a man or a woman with a jug of water - think of the Samaritan woman, for example (cf. Jn 4:5-30) - can the Lord reveal Himself as the One who gives new life, who nourishes our dreams and aspirations with reliable hope, the presence of love that gives meaning and direction to our earthly pilgrimage. As we have already noted, it is that man with the jug who leads the disciples to the room where Jesus will institute the Eucharist. It is the thirst for God that brings us to the altar. If thirst is lacking, our celebrations become dry. Even as the Church, then, the small group of the usual people who gather to celebrate the Eucharist cannot suffice; we must go out into the city, meet the people, learn to recognise and awaken the thirst for God and the desire for the Gospel.

The second image is that of the great hall upstairs (cf. v. 15). It is there that Jesus and his disciples will have the Paschal supper, and this room is in the house of a person who is hosting them. Don Primo Mazzolari said: 'Behold, a man with no name, a landlord, lends him his most beautiful room. [...] He gave what he had greatest because around the great sacrament it takes everything great, room and heart, words and deeds' (La Locusta 1964, 46-48).

A big room for a small piece of bread. God makes himself as small as a piece of bread and that is precisely why a large heart is needed to be able to recognise, adore and welcome him. God's presence is so humble, hidden, sometimes invisible, that it needs a prepared, awake and welcoming heart to be recognised. On the other hand, if our heart, rather than a large room, resembles a closet where we keep old things with regret; if it resembles an attic where we have long since put away our enthusiasm and our dreams; if it resembles a cramped room, a dark room because we live only by ourselves, our problems and our bitterness, then it will be impossible to recognise this silent and humble presence of God. It takes a big room. The heart must be enlarged. We need to step out of the small room of our ego and enter the great space of wonder and adoration. And we miss this so much! This is missing in so many movements that we make to meet, to gather, to think pastoral together... But if this is missing, if amazement and adoration are missing, there is no road that leads us to the Lord. Not even a synod, nothing. This is the attitude before the Eucharist, this is what we need: adoration. The Church must also be a big room. Not a small and closed circle, but a Community with arms wide open, welcoming to all. Let us ask ourselves this: when someone approaches us who is wounded, who has made a mistake, who has a different path in life, is the Church, this Church, a great hall to welcome him and lead him to the joy of the encounter with Christ? The Eucharist wants to feed those who are tired and hungry along the way, let us not forget that! The Church of the perfect and the pure is a room where there is no room for anyone; the Church with open doors, celebrating around Christ, is instead a great hall where everyone - all, righteous and sinners - can enter.

Finally, the third image, the image of Jesus breaking the Bread. It is the Eucharistic gesture par excellence, the identifying gesture of our faith, the place of our encounter with the Lord who offers himself to make us reborn to a new life. Even this gesture is shocking: until then lambs were sacrificed and offered as a sacrifice to God, now it is Jesus who becomes a lamb and sacrifices himself to give us life. In the Eucharist we contemplate and adore the God of love. It is the Lord who breaks no one but breaks Himself. It is the Lord who does not demand sacrifice but sacrifices Himself. It is the Lord who asks nothing but gives everything. To celebrate and live the Eucharist, we too are called to live this love. For you cannot break the Sunday Bread if your heart is closed to your brothers. You cannot eat this Bread if you do not give bread to the hungry. You cannot share this Bread if you do not share the sufferings of those in need. At the end of everything, even of our solemn Eucharistic liturgies, only love will remain. And as of now, our Eucharist transforms the world to the extent that we allow ourselves to be transformed and become bread broken for others.

Brothers and sisters, where do we "prepare the Lord's Supper" today? The procession with the Blessed Sacrament - characteristic of the feast of Corpus Christi, but which we cannot yet do - reminds us that we are called to go out carrying Jesus. Let us go out enthusiastically bringing Christ to those we meet in our daily lives. Let us become a Church with jug in hand, awakening thirst and bringing water. Let us open our hearts wide in love, that we may be the spacious and hospitable hall where all may enter to meet the Lord. Let us break our lives in compassion and solidarity, so that the world may see through us the greatness of God's love. And then the Lord will come, he will surprise us again, he will again become food for the life of the world. And he will satiate us forever, until the day when, in the banquet of Heaven, we will contemplate his face and rejoice without end.

HOMILY BY THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS

St Peter's Basilica Sunday, 6 June 2021