Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Pope emphasizes that the eucharist is the source of Church’s mission of evangelization

The “Reform of the Reform” Has Already Begun

His first act was the inauguration mass of his pontificate. Benedict XVI is a pope of the great tradition of the liturgy, with the eucharist at the center. It is a tradition of liturgical texts, rituals, and music – and symbolic places

by Sandro Magister

ROMA, April 28, 2005 – On Sunday, April 24, Benedict XVI inaugurated his “Petrine ministry as bishop of Rome” in the sunlight of a Saint Peter’s Square overflowing with crowds.

But his first intention was different. He had wanted to celebrate his first solemn mass as pope, not in the square, but inside the basilica of Saint Peter. “Because there the architecture better directs the attention toward Christ, instead of the pope,” he told the masters of ceremonies on Wednesday, April 20, his first full day as the elected pope. Only the immense number of faithful who were coming induced him to change his mind and celebrate the mass outdoors.

That same day, speaking to the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel, he immediately made it clear that in the first place of his agenda for the papacy, above anything else, would be the eucharist. He defined this as “the permanent center and source of the Petrine ministry that has been entrusted to me.”

For him, the form and the substance of liturgical celebrations are intimately connected. And their disarray is expressed in a passage of the startling meditations that he wrote, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, for the Stations of the Cross last Good Friday: “How often do we celebrate only ourselves, without even realizing that He is there!” Here “He” refers to Jesus Christ crucified and risen, the great missing person of so many new liturgies, which have become “meaningless dances around the golden calf that is ourselves.”

For Benedict XVI, in the great sweep of Christian history the mass, or eucharist, is the sacrament that creates the Church. It is the model for the Church, and at the same time it presents the image of the Church to the world. He repeated this to the cardinals in the first speech outlining his agenda: the eucharist is “the heart of Christian life, and the source of the Church’s mission of evangelization.”

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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 11:16 AM