Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “The Eucharist, Lourdes and pastoral care of the sick” is the theme of Pope Benedict XVI's Message for the 16th Day of the Sick to be celebrated on 11 February, feast-day of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Holy Father explains that the theme was chosen in view of two important recurrences this year in the life of the Church: the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of Immaculate Mary at Lourdes in France and the 49th International Eucharistic Congress which will be celebrated in Quebec, Canada. “This provides a singular opportunity to consider the close bond which exists between the Eucharistic Mystery, the role of Mary in God's plan for salvation and the reality of human pain and suffering” the Pope writes in his message.
The 150the anniversary of the apparitions in Lourdes invite us to look to the Blessed Virgin “an example total docility to the will of God”: “to meditate on the Immaculate Conception of Mary is to let ourselves be captivated by that 'yes' which united her in a wonderful way to the mission of Christ, the redeemer of humanity; to let ourselves be guided by Her, to pronounce our own ‘fiat’ to the will of God with our whole life interwoven with joys and sadness, hope and disappointment, aware that trials, pain and suffering make our pilgrimage on earth rich in meaning”. The Pope recalls that “we cannot contemplate Mary without being drawn to Jesus and we cannot look to Christ without sensing immediately the presence of Mary”. This inseparable bond between Mother and Son we sense, “in a mysterious manner in the Sacrament of the Eucharist”, and this bond “extends to the Church, the mystical Body of Christ ”.
John Paul II said Mary was the “woman of the Eucharist” with her whole life, and this is why in Lourdes “veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary is closely connected with the Eucharist with marked and continual reference”. Sick people who make a pilgrimage to Lourdes and the volunteers who accompany them, help us reflect on “Our Lady's maternal tender care for suffering humanity”… Mary suffers with those undergoing trials, with them she hopes and she is their comfort as she sustains them with her maternal assistance”.
In the Message the Pope says the International Eucharistic Congress “will be an opportunity to adore Jesus Christ present in the Sacrament of the altar, and to entrust ourselves to Him as Hope which never fails, to receive Him as the medicine of immortality which heals body and soul”. The Congress theme “The Eucharist, Gift of God for the Life of the World”, underlines that “the Eucharist is a gift which the Father gives to the world in His only Son, incarnate and crucified. It is He who gathers us around the Altar, filling his disciples with loving concern for the sick and the suffering, in whom the Christian community recognise the face of her Lord”. The Pope then urges Christians to strive to serve others, especially those in difficulty, “since the vocation of every Christian is to be, together with Jesus, bread broken for the life of the world”.
Towards the end of the Message Benedict XVI says “precisely from the Eucharist, pastoral care of the sick should draw the necessary spiritual energy to offer effective assistance to people who suffer and help them understand the salvific power of suffering”, and he adds “pain, accepted with faith, becomes the door to the mystery of the redeeming suffering of Jesus and to reaching with Him the peace and happiness of his Resurrection”. The Holy Father concludes with the wish that this year's World Day of the Sick “may be an opportunity to underline the importance of Holy Mass and of adoration the Blessed Sacrament, and that chapels in hospitals and clinics may become a pulsing heart in which Jesus offers himself unceasingly to the Father for the life of humanity” an “opportune circumstance to invoke, in a special way, the maternal protection of Mary upon all those who are tried by illness, and upon health workers and health pastoral workers”. (Agenzia Fides 23/1/2008; righe 46, parole 660)
