Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Pope to Synod: reverence for Eucharist a means to combat despoiling of “the Lord’s vineyard”

Chiesa

The First Synod after the Conclave Gets Underway. The Pope Is Being Tested

The élite of the Catholic hierarchy worldwide are meeting again in Rome, half a year after the election of Benedict XVI. And they’re evaluating his first steps, beginning with his cleaning house within the Church

by Sandro Magister

ROMA, October 3 – For three weeks beginning at the start of October, 250 cardinals and bishops from all over the world – the élite of the Catholic hierarchy – are meeting in synod in Rome. They will be dealing with the theme that Benedict XVI has put at the center from the beginning of his pontificate: the Eucharist.

An abstract theme? On the contrary. Joseph Ratzinger has been stressing this point for months: it is in the sacrament of the Mass that the Church comes to life; it is here that it has its model, here that it offers itself to the world. He has pointed to the example of Pope Gregory the Great: a great celebrator of the liturgy, a great constructor of civilization.

For Benedict XVI, everything hinges on this. In the homily for the Mass on October 2 in St. Peter’s Basilica, he explained that the opposite of the Eucharist is the devastation of “the Lord’s vineyard”: excluding God from public life in the name of a tolerance which in reality is “hypocrisy,” injustice, “the dominance of power and interests.”

And Christians are not exempt from blame, he warned. Especially the Christians of Europe and the West: “The Lord cries aloud into our ears, too, the words which in Revelation he addressed to the Church of Ephesus: ‘I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent’ (2:5). Our light can also be taken away, and we do well if we let this warning resound in all its gravity within our souls, and cry aloud to the Lord: ‘Help us to convert! Give us all the grace of true renewal! Do not permit your light in our midst to be extinguished! Strengthen our faith, our hope, and our love, that we may bear good fruit!’”

The synod will be a twofold test for the new pope. He will give the pros and cons, as he sees the situation, on the theme of the Eucharist. But he will be under close observation on many other themes.

Benedict XVI has already made known the path he intends to take on a number of them, both within and outside of the Church: with the other Christian churches, the Jews, the Muslims, the atheists.

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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 5:27 AM