ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Dear Friends, dear People of God,

Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, our Savior and Redeemer, the one mediator between God and man, has told us that where two or three are gathered in His name, there He is in the midst of them. How blessed we are today, thousands of us gathered in His name—in the holy name of Jesus! As together we renew our faith in Him and in the Holy Eucharist, we experience His presence and His love. And from this presence and this love we receive the strength necessary to live our Christian lives with fidelity and joy. In our Prayer on the Parkway let us reflect for a few moments on God’s holy word.

All four Evangelists provide significant attention to what was one of the most public and widely-witnessed miracles of Jesus during His public ministry: the multiplication of loaves and fish. Moved by compassion for His people in their basic human need for food, Jesus feeds five thousand individuals who had followed Him to a deserted place. In the Gospel according to John, the Evangelist explains that the astonished crowd wanted to make Jesus their King. However, aware of the intention of the crowd, Jesus eluded them.

The Gospel passage just proclaimed relates the exchange between Jesus and the crowd once they find Him the next day in the town of Capernaum. Jesus used the occasion of this miraculous feeding of the vast crowd to offer a new teaching about Himself, about who He truly is, and about the even more wonderful food which He will provide for those who believe in Him.

Engraved deeply in the memory of God’s people was that great act of compassion performed by God in the Old Testament when He gave them manna in the desert. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses reminded the Israelites how God fed them with this special food in order to show them "that not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord" (Dt 8:3). In the Gospel Jesus now sheds new light on this ancient event. He recognizes the hunger of His people and provides bread for them in their need. Jesus then prepares their minds and hearts for that gift which will fulfill all the signs and symbols of old, a gift which will perpetuate His Paschal Mystery, and the gift is the Holy Eucharist. Jesus declares to the crowds: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world" (Jn 6: 51).
Pope Benedict XVI, in his inaugural homily, referred to the many deserts of our modern world: "There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love" (April 24, 2005). On another occasion, the Holy Father again evoked the image of the desert, saying: "From a spiritual point of view, the world in which we find ourselves... can appear a desert just as ‘vast and terrible’ (Dt 8:15) as the one we heard about in the Book of Deuteronomy. God came to the aid of the Jewish people in difficulty in this desert with his gift of manna, to make them understand that ‘not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord’(Dt 8:3).

In today’s Gospel, once again Jesus assures us that the bread that He gives us in the Eucharist is His flesh for the life of the world.

Here on the Parkway we are celebrating the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist, where bread and wine are changed into His Body and Blood. Jesus tells us clearly: "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him" (Jn 6: 54-56).

In the nearness of our God who comes to us under the appearances of bread and wine to be our food and drink, in the love of our God who delights to remain with us in our tabernacles, we are at once astonished, amazed and grateful. With these sentiments then we strive to open the doorway of our hearts to Christ Himself and to our brothers and sisters. The challenge of the Eucharist is the challenge to take upon ourselves in ever greater measure the burdens of our brothers and sisters and the needs of the world.

In his Encyclical on the Eucharist, Pope John Paul II wrote these words: "Many problems darken the horizon of our time. We need but think of the urgent need to work for peace, to base relationships between peoples on solid premises of justice and solidarity, and to defend human life from conception to its natural end. And what should we say of the thousand inconsistencies of a ‘globalized’ world where the weakest, the most powerless and the poorest appear to have so little hope! It is in this world that Christian hope must shine forth!" (no. 20).

Throughout our society, in our cities and our neighborhoods, there are images in so many sectors of our communities, of violence, bloodshed, greed, addiction, sexual abuse, promiscuity and the callous disregard for human life and dignity at so many levels. Daily we are moved by the graphic images of the sufferings of our fellow human beings afflicted by poverty, oppression, and natural disasters. At this time our thoughts, prayers and support go particularly to our brothers and sisters upon whom Hurricane Katrina unleashed such fury. As members of the Church, as Christians who eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist, we cannot be insensitive to the struggles and sufferings of the human family. The Christ who dwells among us, and whom we adore, calls us all to repentance for our sins, to integrity of life and to solidarity with those in need.

What a marvelous manifestation of the Church is present here in this place at this very moment! With Cardinal Bevilacqua, Bishops and priests, deacons, Religious, seminarians, the laity of our Church, young and old, families, parents, children, students, single persons—all united with our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, Pastor of the universal Church, but above all united with Jesus Christ, the eternal Shepherd of the flock, truly present in our midst through the power of His word and, in particular, in the Eucharist. We likewise acknowledge here the spiritual presence of those who unite their sufferings with our prayer. We thank our contemplative nuns for their prayerful support.

Here from Christ’s presence there radiates the power that calls us all to conversion, to greater consistency and to integrity of life. We remember the words of the Apostle John regarding the self-righteous: "If we say, ‘We are without sin; we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.... If we say, ‘We have not sinned,’ we make [God] a liar, and his word is not in us" (1 Jn 1:8, 10). From the personal conversion that the Eucharist makes possible, and with the peace that takes possession of our hearts, we will strive to be peacemakers in our communities, our neighborhoods, our cities, including this great city of Philadelphia. The Eucharist calls us to be apostles of justice and charity, of mercy, forgiveness and reconciliation. It calls us to oppose violence and hatred, and every violation of human life and human dignity.

Dear People of God: as we move toward the conclusion next month of the Year of the Eucharist, we take this opportunity to renew our faith in the person of Jesus Christ. We renew our acceptance of His word—even if it is difficult to understand fully—because it is the word of the Son of God. In particular we accept His teaching when He tells us: "...the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world." We heard in the Gospel of Saint John that, as a result of these words "many of his disciples ... no longer walked with him." And yet Jesus did not change his statement, but rather made the acceptance of it a condition for his disciples to remain in His company. He said to the Twelve: "Do you also want to go away." Today, dear friends, our response to Jesus is the response of Peter who says: "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." This acceptance of Jesus and His Eucharistic presence is essential to our holy Catholic faith.

This faith requires an acceptance also of the challenge of the Eucharist, which is to commit ourselves to our brothers and sisters, in their needs, in their problems, in their joys and anxieties. Our acceptance of Jesus in the Eucharist leads us to renew our solidarity with all human beings everywhere: in the devastated regions of our country, in the Middle East, in the Land of Jesus, in Iraq, in the continent of Africa and everywhere else where people suffer in the deserts of poverty, hunger and thirst, abandonment, loneliness and destroyed love. In particular, we renew our solidarity with those who are defenseless and most vulnerable, especially the unborn. This is where the Eucharist leads us: from prayer to action. And so we are resolved to continue both. In our Eucharistic celebrations and our adoration of the Blessed Sacrament we will be empowered for Christian living and for service to all those who share humanity with Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and with us His brothers and sisters.

And in this our resolve we continue to pray according to our holy Catholic faith. We pray in union with Mary, the Mother of God, who gave us the eternal Word. With her we say: May the Heart of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament be praised, adored and loved, at every moment, in all of the tabernacles of the world, even until the end of time. Amen!