Thursday, October 13, 2005

Synod: two more interventions

... these from lay people. The movements (Foccolare, Neo-Catechumenate, etc.) were well represented in yesterday's deliberations.

Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Sant'Egidio Community:

The life of the Christian among people frequently falls into anonymity. Do Christians have something to give to others? One can give only that which one has received: the bread of the Word and of the Eucharist. Jesus says to the disciples: “give them something to eat yourselves” (Mt 14:16): it is the mission. If good bread is offered, the experience is that there is hunger for it; that times are less negative than it seems to us. And faced with great poverties? Today they are lost or forgotten. The poor cannot be deprived of the Gospel. Charity does not last without the nourishment of Eucharist. I saw this in many known and unknown lives among the poor, who make of the Church today - in spite of our limits - a source for the most desperate. Finally, Christians from the hell lived in the persecutions of the XX century, show that it is always possible to live and to communicate the Gospel. In the year 2000, John Paul II called to gather the witnesses of the new martyrs. I draw attention to the fact that this is an action to be undertaken in the particular Churches and at the centre of the Church. There is a testament of the martyrs to be opened in the context of Eucharist. The bond between Eucharist and martyrdom is a source of trust and hope, beyond our reading of situations, be they realistic of pessimistic.


(Please note, the text on the Holy See's website is a rough translation an summary of the original Italian text)

and Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus:

My remarks are addressed to “Instumentum Laboris”, no. 37 on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In his recent address to the Ecclesial Congress of the Diocese of Rome, our Holy Father reminded us, "Man is created in the image of God, and God himself is love. For this reason, the vocation to love is what makes man the authentic image of God."This call of a vocation to love is the anthropological basis of Pope John Paul II's teaching on the dignity of the human person, marriage and the family. (“Familiaris consortio”, no. 11) Perhaps only this "anthropology of love" is strong enough to overcome the nihilism of contemporary culture, that is, a culture that has broken the connection between freedom and truth.Descartes sought centuries ago to overcome philosophical relativism by the assertion, "I think, therefore I am." Perhaps today relativism can be overcome by a simple and yet more profound insight, "I love, therefore I am." Or even better, "I have been loved, therefore I am."In our time it may be only through the truth of love that the truth of freedom can once again be understood and freedom can be re-connected to truth. Every person is searching for a love that is true. And in this search for true love, each person in his or her heart can grasp whether love is true, and in this truth can grasp a basic truth of the human person.But in a culture of materialism, secularism and relativism where can one find the reality of true love? In our increasingly post-modern culture of the West, philosophical reasoning has less and less persuasive force. Yet all people still search for love, since the vocation to love is written in the heart of each person.We know that the love for which we search is available every day in Our Lord's living sacrifice of himself present to us in the Eucharist.“Gaudium et Spes” tells us "it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear" (no. 22). Is it not also then possible that in our time it is the mystery of the Lord's holy sacrifice of himself that the identity of man-his value, his dignity, his true vocation and the profound truth of his existence-is revealed.Thus, the Eucharistic ecclesiology and the Eucharistic community that have so often been mentioned during this meeting pre-suppose a Eucharistic anthropology. Through the exploration of a Eucharistic vision of the human person-centered on the loving sacrifice of our Lord in the Mass-we may find a new Catechism of the Eucharist which will at the same time make possible a new evangelical gift: by uniting man more intimately with Our Lord in the Eucharist will unite man more intimately with the deepest reality of himself.


I have been loved, therefore I am. Hmm. :)

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