“The lessons we can take in from the Holy Eucharist always surprise us,” Pope Francis said in a video message to the participants of the International Eucharistic Congress in Quito, Ecuador, which got underway on September 8 and will run through next Sunday.
In his speech, he explained how the Eucharist can teach us to come together as brothers and sisters and allow us to grow united as one body in the Church.
“Already the early Church Fathers told us that the sign of bread kindles in the People of God the desire for brotherhood, for just as bread cannot be kneaded from a single grain, so too must we walk together, for 'though we are many, we are one body, one bread,'" the Pope said, citing St. Augustine and then St. Ignatius of Antioch
“This is how we grow as brothers, this is how we grow as Church, united by the water of baptism and purified by the fire of the Holy Spirit. A profound fraternity, born of union with God, born of allowing ourselves to be ground, like wheat, so that we can become bread, the body of Christ, thus participating fully in the Eucharist and in the assembly of the saints.”
The 53rd International Eucharistic Congress has in fact as a theme “fraternity to heal the world.”
The Archdiocese of Quito, capital of Ecuador, is hosting the congress on the 150th anniversary of the consecration of the country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which occurred on March 25, 1874. Delegations from 53 countries will be attending these days filled with concerts, conferences, exhibitions, and liturgies.
The Pope is currently on the other side of the world as he is visiting four countries across Asia and Oceania as part of a 12-day trip.
Venerable Angela Maria Autsch: an example
In his speech Pope Francis also emphasized how “fraternity needs to be proactive” by highlighting the example of Venerable Angela Maria Autsch, a German Sister of the Most Holy Trinity, who was born in 1900 and died in 1944 in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The Pontiff explained that she always encouraged people to rebel against the evil of Nazism and to “get as close as possible to the Sacrament on the altar, to rebel by taking Communion.”
“For her to exhort to take communion often, especially in the context of praying for the pope and the Church, which was being persecuted at that time, was to find in the Eucharist a bond that strengthens the vigor of the Church itself,” the Pope explained. “A bond that strengthens this vigor among its members and with God, and for her it was 'organizing' a web of resistance that the enemy cannot undo, because it does not respond to a human design.”
“It is these simple gestures that make us more aware of the fact that if one member suffers, the whole body suffers with him,” the Pope concluded, emphasizing how “Christ, took upon himself the weight of the world's pain in order to heal the world.”
