The Eucharist: a gift to men and women on their journey
30. Man is created for that true and eternal happiness which only God’s love can give. But our wounded freedom would go astray were it not already able to experience something of that future fulfillment. Moreover, to move forward in the right direction, we all need to be guided toward our final goal. That goal is Christ Himself, the Lord who conquered sin and death, and who makes Himself present to us in a special way in the eucharistic celebration. Even though we remain “aliens and exiles” in this world (1 Pet 2:11), through faith we already share in the fullness of risen life. The eucharistic banquet, by disclosing its powerful eschatological dimension, comes to the aid of our freedom as we continue our journey.

Beauty and the Liturgy
35. This relationship between creed and worship is evidenced in a particular way by the rich theological and liturgical category of beauty. Like the rest of Christian Revelation, the Liturgy is inherently linked to beauty: it is veritatis splendor. The Liturgy is a radiant expression of the Paschal Mystery, in which Christ draws us to Himself and calls us to communion. As Saint Bonaventure would say, in Jesus we contemplate beauty and splendor at their source (cf. Serm. 1, 7; 11, 10; 22, 7; 29, 76: Sermones dominicales ad fidem codicum nunc denuo editi, Grottaferrata, 1977, pp. 135, 209ff., 292ff.; 337; Benedict XVI, Message to Ecclesial Movements and New Communities [May 22, 2006]: AAS 98 [2006], 463). This is no mere aestheticism, but the concrete way in which the truth of God’s love in Christ encounters us, attracts us, and delights us, enabling us to emerge from ourselves and drawing us toward our true vocation, which is love (cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, 22).

A eucharistic form
of Christian life, membership
in the Church
76. The eucharistic form of Christian life is clearly an ecclesial and communitarian form. Through the diocese and the parish, the fundamental structures of the Church in a particular territory, each individual believer can experience concretely what it means to be a member of Christ’s Body. Associations, ecclesial movements, and new communities–with their lively charisms bestowed by the Holy Spirit for the needs of our time–together with Institutes of Consecrated Life, have a particular responsibility for helping to make the faithful conscious that they belong to the Lord (cf. Rom 14:8). Secularization, with its inherent emphasis on individualism, has its most negative effects on individuals who are isolated and lack a sense of belonging. Christianity, from its very beginning, has meant fellowship, a network of relationships.
77. It must be acknowledged that one of the most serious effects of the secularization just mentioned is that it has relegated the Christian faith to the margins of life as if it were irrelevant to everyday affairs. The futility of this way of living–“as if God did not exist”–is now evident to everyone. Today there is a need to rediscover that Jesus Christ is not just a private conviction or an abstract idea, but a real person, whose becoming part of human history is capable of renewing the life of every man and woman. In this way, the Apostle of the Gentiles emphasizes the link between true spiritual worship and the need for a new way of understanding and living one’s life. An integral part of the eucharistic form of the Christian life is a new way of thinking, “so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine” (Eph 4:14).
78. Christ Himself is the truth for every man and woman, and for all human history. The Eucharist becomes a criterion for our evaluation of everything that Christianity encounters in different cultures. In this important process of discernment, we can appreciate the full meaning of Saint Paul’s exhortation in his First Letter to the Thessalonians, to “Test everything; and hold fast to what is good” (5:21).
79. The Eucharist, as a mystery to be “lived,” meets each of us as we are, and makes our concrete existence the place where we experience daily the radical newness of the Christian life. The eucharistic sacrifice nourishes and increases within us all that we have already received at Baptism, with its call to holiness (cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 39-42), and this must be clearly evident from the way individual Christians live their lives. Day by day, we become “a worship pleasing to God” by living our lives as a vocation.
And because the world is “the field” (Mt 13:38) in which God plants his children as good seed, the Christian laity, by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, and strengthened by the Eucharist, are called to live out the radical newness brought by Christ wherever they find themselves (cf. John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici [December 30, 1988], 14, 16: AAS 81 [1989], 409-413; 416-418). They should cultivate a desire that the Eucharist have an ever deeper effect on their daily lives, making them convincing witnesses in the workplace and in society at large (cf. Propositio 39). I encourage families in particular to draw inspiration and strength from this sacrament. The love between man and woman, openness to life, and the raising of children are privileged spheres in which the Eucharist can reveal its power to transform life and give it its full meaning (cf. ibid.). The Church’s pastors should unfailingly support, guide, and encourage the lay faithful to live fully their vocation to holiness within this world which God so loved that He gave His Son to become its salvation (cf. Jn 3:16).

The Eucharist
and moral transformation
82. This appeal to the moral value of spiritual worship should not be interpreted in a merely moralistic way. It is before all else the joy-filled discovery of love at work in the hearts of those who accept the Lord’s gift, abandon themselves to Him, and thus find true freedom. The moral transformation implicit in the new worship instituted by Christ is a heartfelt yearning to respond to the Lord’s love with one’s whole being, while remaining ever conscious of one’s own weakness. This is clearly reflected in the Gospel story of Zacchaeus (cf. Lk 19:1-10). After welcoming Jesus to his home, the tax collector is completely changed: he decides to give half of his possessions to the poor and to repay fourfold those whom he had defrauded. The moral urgency born of welcoming Jesus into our lives is the fruit of gratitude for having experienced the Lord’s unmerited closeness.

Eucharistic consistency
83. Here it is important to consider what the Synod Fathers described as eucharistic consistency, a quality which our lives are objectively called to embody. Worship pleasing to God can never be a purely private matter, without consequences for our relationships with others; it demands a public witness to our faith. Evidently, this is true for all the baptized, yet it is especially incumbent upon those who, by virtue of their social or political position, must make decisions regarding fundamental values, such as respect for human life, its defense from conception to natural death, the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman, the freedom to educate one’s children, and the promotion of the common good in all its forms (cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae [March 25, 1995]: AAS 87 [1995], 401-522; Benedict XVI, Address to the Pontifical Academy for Life [February 27, 2006]: AAS 98 [2006], 264-265). These values are not negotiable. Consequently, Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particularly bound, on the basis of a properly formed conscience, to introduce and support laws inspired by values grounded in human nature (cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life [November 24, 2002]: AAS 96 [2004], 359-370). There is an objective connection here with the Eucharist (cf. 1 Cor 11:27-29). Bishops are bound to reaffirm constantly these values as part of their responsibility to the flock entrusted to them (cf. Propositio 46).

The Eucharist and witness
85. The first and fundamental mission that we receive from the sacred mysteries we celebrate is that of bearing witness by our lives. The wonder we experience at the gift God has made to us in Christ gives new impulse to our lives and commits us to becoming witnesses of His love. We become witnesses when, through our actions, words, and way of being, Another makes Himself present. Witness could be described as the means by which the truth of God’s love comes to men and women in history, inviting them to accept freely this radical newness. Through witness, God lays Himself open, one might say, to the risk of human freedom.

Christ Jesus, the one Saviour
86. The more ardent the love for the Eucharist in the hearts of the Christian people, the more clearly will they recognize the goal of all mission: to bring Christ to others. Not just a theory or a way of life inspired by Christ, but the gift of His very person. Anyone who has not shared the truth of love with his brothers and sisters has not yet given enough. The Eucharist, as the sacrament of our salvation, inevitably reminds us of the unicity of Christ and the salvation that He won for us by His blood. The mystery of the Eucharist, believed in and celebrated, demands a constant catechesis on the need for all to engage in a missionary effort centerd on the proclamation of Jesus as the one Saviour (cf. Propositio 42; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church Dominus Iesus [August 6, 2000], 13-15: AAS 92 [2000], 754-755). This will help to avoid a reductive and purely sociological understanding of the vital work of human promotion present in every authentic process of evangelization.

The Eucharist, bread broken for the life of the world
88. “The bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world” (Jn 6:51). In these words, the Lord reveals the true meaning of the gift of His life for all people. These words also reveal His deep compassion for every man and woman. The Gospels frequently speak of Jesus’ feelings toward others, especially the suffering and sinners (cf. Mt 20:34; Mk 6:34; Lk 19:41). Through a profoundly human sensibility, He expresses God’s saving will for all people–that they may have true life.
97. True joy is found in recognizing that the Lord is still with us, our faithful companion along the way. The Eucharist makes us discover that Christ, risen from the dead, is our contemporary in the mystery of the Church, His body. Of this mystery of love we have become witnesses. Let us encourage one another to walk joyfully, our hearts filled with wonder, toward our encounter with the Holy Eucharist, so that we may experience and proclaim to others the truth of the words with which Jesus took leave of His disciples: “Lo, I am with you always, until the end of the world” (Mt 28:20).

Given in Rome in Saint Peter’s
on February 22nd, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, in the year 2007, the second of my Pontificate