Synod of Bishops Julián Carrón’s intervention

The Eucharist, God’s Method with His Creature
Fr. Carrón took part in the Synod as a member appointed by the Pope himself, invited
as President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation. We publish here the text
of his intervention in Rome, October 11, 2005

by Julián Carrón

Holy Father, Venerable Fathers, Brothers and Sisters: Quite aware of my disproportion with the gesture we are living, I offer some reflections on Part IV of Instrumentum Laboris: “Eucharist in the Church’s mission,” with particular regard to no. 78.
The situation of contemporary man is riddled with difficulties, but none of these can take away his heart’s expectation. The very nature of man’s heart moves him to hope. At the same time, it is difficult to find an answer and this leads him to doubt that a positive destiny is possible.
Man today will take the Christian proposal seriously if he perceives it as a meaningful answer to the cry of his human need. So the whole challenge we have to face in announcing Christ consists of living the content of faith in such a way as to show its anthropological relevance, that is, its overabundant correspondence to the original needs of the heart.

God’s gratuitous initiative
1. “God so loved the world that He gave His own Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not die, but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). The summit of this free initiative of the Father was the death and resurrection of Christ, the ultimate expression of this love, through which Christ reconciled men definitively with God, making true communion with Him possible.
In inviting the disciples to carry out the Eucharistic action in His memory, Jesus Christ makes possible for every man “a mysterious contemporaneity” of His presence in every moment of history (Ecclesia de Eucaristia 5; Veritatis Splendor 25). Through the Eucharistic action, which makes His boundless love present, Christ Himself moves us to “live no longer for ourselves, but for Him who died and rose for us” (2 Cor 5:14-15). Whoever welcomes with faith the gift of the Lord’s Body and Blood partakes in that novelty which Christ introduced into history forever, and enters into that communion that He lives with the Father in the Spirit. Thus, the Apostle could say, “Anyone who is in Christ is a new creature; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here” (2 Cor 5:17). This reality is experienced as a new unity that overcomes the divisions that set men against each other: “There is no more Jew or Greek; no more slave or freeman; no more man or woman; you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).

An event within history
2. “The Eucharist,” said Fr. Guissani, the founder of Communion and Liberation, “is the supreme confirmation of the method that God establishes with His creature, that of making Himself present within a sign that is visible and tangible and which can therefore be experienced.” It is an event within history: Jesus Himself is the supreme manifestation of this method in which God does not abandon His creature, but has pity on Him, making Christ’s humanity the effective sign of His real Presence. The Lord wanted to make the Eucharist the sacrament of the unity of Christians in Him and with Him, making them witnesses, sign and instrument of God’s salvific plan (Lumen Gentium 1, 48). For the Eucharist is a way of “being” that passes from Jesus to the Christian–the baptized–and, through his witness, tends to spread through society and culture (cf., Mane nobiscum Domine 25-26). According to its sacramental nature, the Church has influence in history because it arouses and educates people who allow themselves to be involved in the novelty of Christ’s life and therefore can communicate it to their fellow men. In this way, through the changed life of those who belong to Christ, God goes on soliciting the freedom of men in every place and circumstance (work, family and friendships, free time, etc.).

The need for witnesses
3. Only the unique Presence of the Lord can move the person to the very depth of his heart’s expectation. This is why, in the face of the challenge of our times, the sacrament of the Eucharist becomes indispensable in all the effectiveness of its fruits of true communion and of new humanity. We see this effectiveness revealed in the favelas of Brazil, in the universities of Kazakhstan, among the victims of AIDS in Uganda, and in the great metropolises of the United States. Today, we all need the presence of witnesses who truly live in this communion that the Lord gives us sacramentally, the communion of those “chosen, according to God’s Providence, to carry on, in their turn, the succession of His witnesses” (Newman). Thus, by meeting them, we will acknowledge, with astonishment and gratitude, that the presence of Christ is in them and we will glorify God for the person of His Son (Gal 1:24) and for the gift of the Eucharist. We ourselves, in this sacramental dynamic, will be transformed according to the glorious image that attracts our gaze (2 Cor 3:18). We shall be able to reflect Christ’s light through the whole of our lives, so that men and women of our time may find reasons for believing in and hoping for the fulfillment of the promises inscribed in the depths of our hearts, revealed and realized fully in Christ’s Eucharistic self-giving.