VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE
YEAR XXII - # 129
DATE 10-07-2015
Summary:
- "Transform the logic of wastefulness into the logic of communion and
community": Francis inaugurates the Fifth National Eucharistic Congress in
Bolivia
- To the Bolivian clergy: "To pass by without hearing the pain of our people is
like listening to the word of God without letting it take root"
- To popular movements: the universal destination of goods is not a figure of
speech in the Church's social teaching
- Other Pontifical Acts
- Notice
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"Transform the logic of wastefulness into the logic of communion and
community": Francis inaugurates the Fifth National Eucharistic Congress in
Bolivia
Vatican City, 10 July 2015 (VIS) "The Eucharist, bread broken for the life of
the world" is the theme of the Fifth National Eucharistic Congress of Bolivia,
which the Holy Father inaugurated yesterday with the celebration of Mass in
Plaza del Cristo Redentor in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Francis dedicated his
homily to the sharing of bread, which Jesus distributed to the multitude with
the same hands He raised to heaven to bless God, before almost two million
faithful gathered in the square and in the adjacent streets where maxi-screens
had been installed.
The readings and prayers of the celebration were in Spanish and in indigenous
languages: Guarani, Quechua and Aimara. The passage from the Gospel of St. Mark
recounted the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.
"We have come from a variety of places, areas and villages, to celebrate the
living presence of God among us", said the Pope. "We have travelled from our
homes and communities to be together as God's holy People. The cross and the
mission image remind us of all those communities which were born of the name of
Jesus in these lands. We are their heirs. The Gospel which we just heard speaks
of a situation much like our own. Like those four thousand people who gathered
to hear Jesus, we too want to listen to His words and to receive His life. Like
them, we are in the presence of the Master, the Bread of Life.
"I am moved to see so many mothers carrying their children on their shoulders,
like so many of you here. Carrying them, you bring your lives, the future of
your people. You bring all your joys and hopes. You bring the blessing of the
earth and all its fruits. You bring the work of your hands, hands which work
today in order to weave tomorrow's hopes and dreams. But those people's
shoulders were also weighed down by bitter disappointments and sorrows, scarred
by experiences of injustice and of justice denied. They bore on their shoulders
all the joy and pain of their land. You too bear the memory of your own people.
Because every people has a memory, a memory which is passed on from generation
to generation, a memory which continues to move forward. Frequently we tire of
this journey. Frequently we lack the strength to keep hope alive. How often
have
we experienced situations which dull our memory, weaken our hope and make us
lose our reason for rejoicing! And then a kind of sadness takes over. We think
only of ourselves, we forget that we are a people which is loved, a chosen
people. And the loss of that memory disorients us, it closes our heart to
others, and especially to the poor.
"We may feel the way the disciples did, when they saw the crowds of people
gathered there. They begged Jesus to send them away, since it was impossible to
provide food for so many people. Faced with so many kinds of hunger in our
world, we can say to ourselves: 'Things don't add up; we will never manage,
there is nothing to be done'. And so our hearts yield to despair. A despairing
heart finds it easy to succumb to a way of thinking which is becoming ever more
widespread in our world. It is a mentality in which everything has a price,
everything can be bought, everything is negotiable. This way of thinking has
room only for a select few, while it discards all those who are 'unproductive',
unsuitable or unworthy, since clearly those people don't 'add up'. But Jesus
once more turns to us and says: 'They don't need to go away; you yourselves,
give them something to eat'.
"Those words of Jesus have a particular resonance for us today: No one needs
to
go away, no one has to be discarded; you yourselves, give them something to
eat.
Jesus speaks these words to us, here in this square. Yes, no one has to be
discarded; you, give them something to eat. Jesus' way of seeing things leaves
no room for the mentality which would cut bait on the weak and those most in
need. Taking the lead, He gives us His own example, He shows us the way
forward.
What He does can be summed up in three words. He takes a little bread and some
fish, He blesses them and then gives them to His disciples to share with the
crowd. This is how the miracle takes place. It is not magic or sorcery. With
these three gestures, Jesus is able to turn a mentality which discards others
into a mindset of communion and community. I would like briefly to look at each
of these actions.
"Taking. This is the starting-point: Jesus takes His own and their lives very
seriously. He looks at them in the eye, and He knows what they are
experiencing,
what they are feeling. He sees in those eyes all that is present in the memory
and the hearts of his people. He looks at it, He ponders it. He thinks of all
the good which they can do, all the good upon which they can build. But He is
not so much concerned about material objects, cultural treasures or lofty
ideas.
He is concerned with people. The greatest wealth of a society is measured by
the
lives of its people, it is gauged by its elderly, who pass on their knowledge
and the memory of their people to the young. Jesus never detracts from the
dignity of anyone, no matter how little they possess or seem capable of
contributing.
"Blessing. Jesus takes what is given Him and blesses His heavenly Father. He
knows that everything is God's gift. So He does not treat things as "objects",
but as part of a life which is the fruit of God's merciful love. He values
them.
He goes beyond mere appearances, and in this gesture of blessing and praise He
asks the Father for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Blessing has this double
aspect: thanksgiving and transformative power. t is a recognition that life is
always a gift which, when placed in the hands of God, starts to multiply. Our
Father never abandons us; he makes everything multiply.
"Giving. With Jesus, there can be no 'taking' which is not a 'blessing', and
no
blessing which is not also a 'giving'. Blessing is always mission, its purpose
is to share what we ourselves have received. For it is only in giving, in
sharing, that we find the source of our joy and come to experience salvation.
Giving makes it possible to refresh the memory of God's holy people, called and
sent forth to bring the joy of salvation to others. The hands which Jesus lifts
to bless God in heaven are the same hands which gave bread to the hungry crowd.
We can imagine how those people passed the loaves of bread and the fish from
hand to hand, until they came to those farthest away. Jesus generated a kind of
electrical current among His followers, as they shared what they had, made it a
gift for others, and so ate their fill. Unbelievably, there were even
leftovers:
enough to fill seven baskets. A memory which is taken, blessed and given always
satisfies people's hunger.
"The Eucharist is 'bread broken for the life of the world'. That is the theme
of the Fifth Eucharistic Congress to be held in Tarija, which today we
inaugurate. The Eucharist is a sacrament of communion, which draws us out of
our
individualism in order to live together as disciples. It gives us the certainty
that all that we have, all that we are, if it is taken, blessed and given, can,
by God's power, by the power of His love, become bread of life for all. The
Church is a community of remembrance. Hence, in fidelity to the Lord's command,
she never ceases to say: 'Do this in remembrance of me'. Generation after
generation, throughout the world, she celebrates the mystery of the Bread of
Life. She makes it present and she gives it to us. Jesus asks us to share in
His
life, and through us He allows this gift to multiply in our world. We are not
isolated individuals, separated from one another, but rather a people of
remembrance, a remembrance ever renewed and ever shared with others. A life of
remembrance needs others. It demands exchange, encounter and a genuine
solidarity capable of entering into the mindset of taking, blessing and giving.
It demands the logic of love.
Pope Francis concluded his homily by recalling that Mary, like many of the
mothers present, "bore in her heart the memory of her people. She pondered the
life of her Son. She personally experienced God's grandeur and joyfully
proclaimed that He 'fills the hungry with good things'. Today may Mary be our
model. Like her, may we trust in the goodness of the Lord, who does great
things
with the lowliness of his servants".
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To the Bolivian clergy: "To pass by without hearing the pain of our people is
like listening to the word of God without letting it take root"
Vatican City, 10 July 2015 (VIS) - "How can you love God, whom you do not see,
if you do not love your brother whom you do see?" was the question Pope Francis
posed to the four thousand Bolivian priests, men and women religious and
seminarians whom he met yesterday afternoon in the "Coliseo Don Bosco", a
school
managed by Salesian Fathers. The Holy Father commented on the passage from the
Gospel about the blind man Bartimaeus, a beggar who, hearing Jesus approach
with
the apostles and a large crowd of followers, calls out to be healed.
"If we translate this, forcing the language", said the Pope, "around Jesus we
find the bishops, priests, nuns, seminarians, active laypeople, all those who
follow Jesus, listening to Him, and the faithful people of God".
"Two things about this story jump out at us and make an impression", remarked
Francis. "On the one hand, there is the cry of a beggar, and on the other, the
different reactions of the disciples. Let us think of the different reactions
of
the bishops, the priests, the nuns, the seminarians, and the cries that are
heard or that go unheeded. It is as if the Evangelist wanted to show us the
effect which Bartimaeus' cry had on people's lives, on the lives of Jesus'
followers. How did they react when faced with the suffering of that man on the
side of the road, in his misery, whom nobody noticed, to whom nobody gave
anything ... who did not enter into that circle of the Lord's followers".
The Gospel tells us of the three responses to the cry of the blind man: they
passed by, they told him to be quiet, and they told him to take heart and get
up.
"They passed by. Perhaps some of those who passed by did not even hear his
shouting, because they were not listening. They were with Jesus ... they wanted
to
hear Jesus. They did not listen. Passing by is the response of indifference, of
avoiding other people's problems because they do not affect us. It is not my
problem. We do not hear them, we do not recognise them. Deafness. Here we have
the temptation to see suffering as something natural, to take injustice for
granted. And yes, there are people like this. I am here with God, with my
consecrated life, and yes, it is natural that there are sick people ... the
poor ...
people who suffer; and so it is also natural that a cry or a plea for help does
not attract my attention. And we say to ourselves, 'This is nothing unusual;
this is the way things are'. It is the response born of a blind, closed heart,
a
heart which has lost the ability to be touched and hence the possibility to
change. A heart used to passing by without letting itself be touched; a life
which passes from one thing to the next, without ever sinking roots in the
lives
of the people around us, simply because it is part of the elite that follows
the
Lord. We could call this 'the spirituality of zapping'. It is always on the
move, but it has nothing to show for it. There are people who keep up with the
latest news, the most recent best sellers, but they never manage to connect
with
others, to strike up a relationship, to get involved, even with the Lord they
--- MPost/386 v1.21
* Origin: Sursum Corda! BBS=Huntsville AL=bbs.sursum-corda.com (1:396/45)
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