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"Turn to the Eucharist. And that Bread which is your God humbling and disguising Himself will teach you humility." St Cyril of Alexandria
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| Before the Blessed Sacrament bring a prayer of healing and comfort for a true shepherd. | ||
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Pray for Our Holy Father
Eternal Father, we thank you for your providential guidance over the Church. We thank you for the Gift of your Son who through the Eucharist fulfills his promise to remain with us even to the end of time. And we thank you for hearing our prayer in granting us a new universal shepherd to guide us in the person of Pope Benedict XVI. We pray for your special blessing upon him. May he be given all the grace and strength he needs to guide us in the way of truth and to lead us to deeper contemplation of the face of your Son called for by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. May Pope Benedict XVI especially lead us to take full advantage of the grace given us especially during this, the Year of the Eucharist. United with Mary, the Mother of the Eucharist, we ask this through Jesus Christ, your Son and Our Lord. Amen.
From Benedict XVI's Apostolic Exhortation . . .
"The intrinsic relationship between celebration and adoration."
"One of the most moving moments of the Synod came when we gathered in Saint Peter's Basilica, together with a great number of the faithful, for eucharistic adoration. In this act of prayer, and not just in words, the assembly of Bishops wanted to point out the intrinsic relationship between eucharistic celebration and eucharistic adoration."
"The practice of eucharistic adoration."
"I heartily recommend to the Church's pastors and to the People of God the practice of eucharistic adoration, both individually and in community . . . I would also like to encourage those associations of the faithful and confraternities specifically devoted to eucharistic adoration; they serve as a leaven of contemplation for the whole Church and a summons to individuals and communities to place Christ at the centre of their lives."
March 14, 2007
From Benedict XVI's 1st Homily From Cathedral of Rome . . .
"In the Eucharist, we ourselves learn the love of Christ."
"Thanks to this center and heart, thanks to the Eucharist, the saints have lived, bringing the love of God to the world in ever new forms and ways. Thanks to the Eucharist, the Church is always reborn. The Church is no more than that network -- the Eucharistic community! -- in which all of us, by receiving the same Lord, become only one body and embrace the whole world. To preside in doctrine and love, in the end, must be only one thing: all the doctrine of the Church, in the end, leads to love. And the Eucharist, as the present love of Jesus Christ, is the criterion of all doctrine. On love depend all the law and the prophets, says the Lord (Matthew 22:40). Love is the fulfillment of the law, wrote St. Paul to the Romans (13:10)." May 10, 2005
From Benedict XVI's First Statement . . .
"I ask all to intensify over the next months their love and devotion to Jesus in the Eucharist and to express in a courageous and clear way their faith in the Lord's real presence."
"In a very significant way, my pontificate starts as the Church is living the special year dedicated to the Eucharist. How can I not see in this providential coincidence an element that must mark the ministry to which I have been called? The Eucharist, the heart of Christian life and the source of the evangelizing mission of the Church, cannot but be the permanent center and the source of the Petrine service entrusted to me.
The Eucharist makes the Risen Christ constantly present, Christ Who continues to give himself to us, calling us to participate in the banquet of his Body and his Blood. From this full communion with him comes every other element of the life of the Church, in the first place the communion among the faithful, the commitment to proclaim and give witness to the Gospel, the ardor of charity towards all, especially towards the poor and the smallest.
In this year, therefore, the Solemnity of Corpus Christ must be celebrated in a particularly special way. The Eucharist will be at the center, in August, of World Youth Day in Cologne and, in October, of the ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops which will take place on the theme "The Eucharist, Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church." I ask everyone to intensify in coming months love and devotion to the Eucharistic Jesus and to express in a courageous and clear way the real presence of the Lord, above all through the solemnity and the correctness of the celebrations.
I ask this in a special way of priests, about whom I am thinking in this moment with great affection. The priestly ministry was born in the Cenacle, together with the Eucharist, as my venerated predecessor John Paul II underlined so many times. "The priestly life must have in a special way a 'Eucharistic form,'" he wrote in his last Letter for Holy Thursday. The devout daily celebration of Holy Mass, the center of the life and mission of every priest, contributes to this end." April 20, 2005
From the book, "God is Near Us"
"Only within the breathing space of adoration can the Eucharistic celebration indeed be alive; only if the church and thus the whole congregation is constantly imbued with the waiting presence of the Lord, and with our silent readiness to respond, can the invitation to come together bring us into the hospitality of Jesus Christ and of the Church, which is the precondition of the invitation. . . . Communion and adoration do not stand side by side, or even in opposition, but are indivisibly one." Cardinal Ratzinger for his book "God is Near Us" 2003 Ignatius Press
From an Interview in 2003
The Eucharist, and the community that celebrates it, will be full in the measure in which we prepare ourselves in silent prayer before the presence of the Lord and become persons who want to communicate with truth . . . The Eucharist is God as response, as a presence that responds. Now the initiative of the divine-human relation no longer depends on us, but on him, and so it becomes really serious. This is why, in the realm of eucharistic adoration, prayer reaches a totally new level; only now it involves both parties, and only now is it something serious. What is more, not only does it involve the two parties, but only now is it fully universal: When we pray in the presence of the Eucharist, we are never alone. The whole Church that celebrates the Eucharist prays with us. In this prayer we are no longer before a God we have thought about, but before a God who has really given himself to us; before a God who has made himself communion for us, who thus liberates us from our limits through communion and leads us to the Resurrection." Cardinal Ratzinger March 17, 2003
From the book, "The Ratzinger Report"
"People have forgotten that adoration is an intensification of communion. It is not a case of ‘individualistic’ piety: it is a prolonging of, or a preparation for, the community element. The Corpus Christi processions so loved by the people should be retained." Cardinal Ratzinger for his book "The Ratzinger Report" 1985 Ignatius Press