Alcuin Reid - From Eucharistic Adoration to Evangelization: With a Homily for Corpus Christi 2011 by Pope Benedict XVI.

From Eucharistic
Adoration
to Evangelization

From Eucharistic Adoration to Evangelization

Edited by

Alcuin Reid

Published by Burns & Oates International

A Continuum Imprint

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Alcuin Reid, with contributors, 2012

Alcuin Reid and contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-4411-0479-3

Contents

Bishop Gino Reali

Bishop Dominique Rey

Bishop Dominique Rey

Dom Mark Daniel Kirby OSB

Mother Adela Galindo

Bishop Giovanni DErcole

Mauro Cardinal Piacenza

Monsignor Guido Marini

Bishop Athanasius Schneider

Bishop D. Jos Ignacio Munilla Aguirre

Father Nicholas Buttet

Francis Cardinal Arinze

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith

Peter Cardinal Turkson

Sister Joseph MC

Antonio Cardinal Caizares Llovera

Father Florian Racine

Pope Benedict XVI

Editors Preface

Adoratio 2011 was more an event than a conference. It brought to Rome more than three hundred clergy, religious and laity from around the world not only to listen to eminent speakers, but to pray together in the Sacred Liturgy daily in the solemn celebration of the Sacrifice of the Mass and of the Liturgy of the Hours and throughout each night in solemn Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

This volume makes available the texts of all the conferences and homilies from Adoratio 2011. The organizers wished to make them available as soon as possible in order to ensure that the teaching and witness they contain will be available to those who could not be present in Rome as well as to assist all in the apostolate of the New Evangelization, which is fundamentally Eucharistic.

We are indebted to the speakers for providing their texts so readily, and to the many translators who have worked quickly to ensure the prompt publication of this book. To that end, the books publication has not been delayed by an insistence upon rigorous academic referencing: the texts stand, by and large, as the authors presented them in Rome. It is to be hoped that the authors sources are clear and easily accessible in English. The opinions they express herein remain their own.

The event that was Adoratio 2011 encompassed something of the vitality and rich Catholic diversity of the Church united with and under Peter at the beginning of the third millennium. May the efforts of its speakers and its organizers bring forth an abundant harvest!

Dom Alcuin Reid

Welcome

Bishop Gino Reali

Bishop of Porto-Santa Rufina, Italy

Translated from Italian by E. Scott Borgman

At the beginning of this International Congress on Eucharistic Adoration, brought about by His Excellency Bishop Dominique Rey, Bishop of Frjus-Toulon, France, and organized by the Missionaries of the Most Holy Eucharist, I am happy to offer you my most cordial greetings and to welcome each of you to this house belonging to the Sons of Don Bosco.

Along with this greeting to Bishop Rey, I give a fraternal welcome to the cardinals and bishops who will guide the reflections and prayers in the following days. Furthermore, welcome to the distinguished speakers and to all those who in their various responsibilities are contributing to the intense programme of work of this Congress in order that it may produce good fruit for our spiritual lives and for the ministry, which all of us are called to give to the Church and to the world.

I also hope to express the joy of welcoming into our diocese such an important initiative as this one, which has captured the attention of such a great number of participants. There are also great expectations attached to this most decisive part of our faith and pastoral mission, which is that of recognizing and adoring the Lord, Who is sacramentally present among His own, feeding and guiding them as He accompanies them on the paths of testifying and proclaiming the Gospel.

The Church of Porto-Santa Rufina, which welcomes you in these days is, along with the Church of Ostia, the oldest of the suburbicarian dioceses [dioceses surrounding Rome]. Tradition has it that St Peter evangelized this territory and founded the first Christian communities on this periphery of Rome. Located on the north-west side, between the city and the sea, this ancient Church, called Portuense, has grown enormously in population since the middle of the last century. This expansion continues to transform the entire territory of the diocese with the appearing of new neighbourhoods on the Roman side and of entire new cities on the coastal area. This surge in population requires additional generosity from the Christian community in its apostolic work and in its witness to holiness.

Indeed, this holiness of life in Christians is the most convincing and effective form of evangelization within the Christian proposal, as is proven in the history of our Church. The memory of the holy Portuensi martyrs and of the martyrs of the Selva Candida, who with their witness and with their blood irrigated our land, urges us to be coherent and courageous as we truly serve the Gospel.

The name of our Church conserves the name of the ancient settlements of the community: the gate of Rome, the mouth of the Tiber and the basilica of the Holy Martyrs Rufina and Seconda, on the Via Boccea, between the ancient consular roads, the Aurelia and the Cassia. These are well known to Roman pilgrims and, therefore, our name conserves and proposes once again the special vocation of this Church which is that of being the gate of Rome, that of giving a brotherly welcome to those who are on the road towards the city of Peter and towards the tombs of the apostles. We intend to honour this vocation by growing evermore in our communion and faithfulness to the apostolic See and in the love toward the successor of Peter, sustaining daily with our prayers the ministry of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, to whom we want to offer today our filial congratulations for the sixtieth anniversary of his priestly ordination.

The same Pope Benedict XVI never tires of repeating to us that, in the life of the Christian, the harmony of two points of reference must be lived out. The first is the prioritizing and fundamental reference to Christ and to His friendship. The second is the reference to our fellow man and to the world the place where this friendship with Christ must live itself out and expand until it reaches everyone. This model is evident when Jesus first calls the apostles to be with Him before sending them out into the world to preach (cf. Mk 3.1415); furthermore, He also proposes this same path to the other disciples.

To place the Eucharist at the centre of the life of the Church and at the centre of our lives is to place the encounter with Christ before all else, to be with Him, identifying Him in that extraordinary sacramental presence which precedes and excels all other forms of the presence of the Lord. And the Eucharist transforms us. In particular, Eucharistic Adoration becomes union. The Pope was saying this to the youth gathered in Cologne in August of 2005, explaining the different meanings of the term