|
Vatican City,
30th May 2005 (CNA)
- On his first official apostolic trip
outside of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI traveled to
Bari yesterday for the closing of Italy’s
24th Eucharistic Congress where he
stressed that Christians need the Eucharist and
the Sunday obligation to “find the energy
necessary for the path they must follow.”
In his homily for the closing ceremonies of
the congress, themed, ‘Without Sundays, We Cannot
Live,’ the Holy Father told the crowd of 200,000
that, "We need this Bread in order to cope with
the fatigue and weariness of the journey. Sunday,
the day of the Lord, is the right occasion to draw
strength from Him Who is the Lord of
life.”
He added that, “The precept of the feast
day is not, then, simply an obligation imposed
from outside…[but] a need for
Christians.”
Pope Benedict concelebrated Mass with
prelates of the Italian Episcopal Conference
yesterday morning in the "Marisabella" esplanade
in the Southern Italian city.
Following the Mass he prayed his
traditional Sunday Angelus with the gathered
faithful.
During the homily, the Pope recalled that
the theme of the Eucharistic congress "takes us
back to the year 304, when the emperor Diocletian
prohibited Christians, on pain of death, from
possessing the Scriptures and from coming together
on Sunday to celebrate the Eucharist.”
“In Abitene, a small town in what is today
Tunisia,” he said, “49 Christians" were arrested
one Sunday as they celebrated the Eucharist, "in
defiance of the imperial proscription. ...
Following atrocious tortures, they were put to
death."
Like the martyrs of Abitene, the Holy
Father continued, it is not easy for Christians of
this century "to live like Christians. ... The
world in which we live [is] often marked by
unbridled consumerism, by religious indifference
and by a secularism closed to all forms of
transcendence."
Referring to the Mass readings which
recalled God’s "gift of manna," to the Jewish
people in the desert, the Pope said, "The Son of
God, having been made flesh, could become Bread,
and thus act as nourishment for His people on
their journey to the promised land in
heaven.”
|
