VATICAN - “To welcome Jesus and carry him to others is the true joy of the Christian! Let us follow and imitate Mary, a profoundly eucharistic soul, and our whole life will be a Magnificat”: the Pope said at the end of the month of May, the month of Mary

Wednesday, 1 June 2005

Vatican City (Fides Service) - “In this special Year of the Eucharist we are living Mary helps us appreciate more and more the great sacrament of the Eucharist. Our beloved Pope John Paul II in his last Encyclical - Ecclesia de Eucharistia - presented Mary to us as a ‘woman of the Eucharist’ all through her life. A woman of the Eucharist in profundity, beginning from her inward attitude: from the Annunciation when she offered herself for the incarnation of God’s Word, to the cross and the resurrection; a woman of the Eucharist in the time following Pentecost when she received in the Sacrament the Body she had borne in her womb”. Pope Benedict XVI said this to several hundred people gathered in the Vatican Gardens on 31 May. The occasion was the traditional Vatican’s rosary procession from the ancient little Church of St Stephen of the Abyssinians immediately behind St Peter’s to the little Grotto of Lourdes. The procession was led by Archbishop Angelo Comastri, Vicar General of His Holiness for Vatican City State. The Pope joined the procession on its arrival at the feet of the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes.
Meditating the mystery of Our Lady’s Visitation to her cousin Elizabeth, the Pope said: “In a way we can say- and all the more in this Year of the Eucharist - that her journey was the first ever "Eucharistic procession ". The living tabernacle of God made man, Mary is the Ark of the Covenant in which the Lord visited and redeemed his people. The presence of Jesus fills her with the Holy Spirit”. This encounter is steeped in the joy of the Spirit expressed in the Magnificat canticle. “Is this not also the joy of the Church which incessantly welcomes Christ in the holy Eucharist and carries him through witness of active charity permeated with faith and hope? Yes, to welcome Jesus and carry him to others is the true joy of the Christian! Dear brothers and sisters let us follow and imitate Mary, a profoundly Eucharistic soul and our whole life will be a Magnificat. Let this be the grace we ask of the Most Holy Virgin Mary this evening at the end of the month of May”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 1/6/2005, righe 25, parole 374)


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