He won’t stop confronting us with what matters…at the Angelus today:

The Eucharistic Celebration with which we inaugurated the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops has just concluded at the Basilica of St Peter.

The Synodal Fathers, coming from all over the world, together with experts and other delegates, will live a privileged time of prayer throughout the coming three weeks, together with the Successor of Peter. They will reflect on the theme: “The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church”. Why this theme? Isn’t it perhaps a subject taken for granted, fully covered? In reality, Catholic doctrine about the Eucharist, defined authoritatively by the Council of Trent, asks that it be taken in, lived and transmitted by the Church Community in a way which is ever new and adapted to the times. The Eucharist could be considered also as a “lens” through which the face and the journey of the Church – which Christ founded so that every man may know the love of God and find in it the fullness of life – may be continuously verified. For this, the loved Pope John Paul II wanted to dedicate an entire year to the Eucharist, a year which will close with the end of the Synodal Assembly on 23 October, the Sunday in which the World Day for Missions will be celebrated.

This coincidence helps us to contemplate the Eucharistic mystery from a missionary perspective. The Eucharist, in effect, is the propeller at the centre of the entire evangelizing activity of the Church, somewhat as the heart is in the human body. Christian communities, without the Eucharistic celebration in which they are nourished by the twofold meal of the Word and the Body of Christ, would lose their authentic nature: they can only transmit Christ to men – and not merely ideas or values, however noble and important – in so much as they are “Eucharistic”. The Eucharist has moulded outstanding missionary apostles in all status in life: bishops, priests, religious, lay people; saints in active and contemplative life. We think, on the one hand, of St Francis Xavier, who was prompted by the love of Christ to go as distant as the Far East to announce the Gospel; on the other hand, we think of St Therese of Lisieux, a young Carmelite sister, whose memory we marked only yesterday. She lived out her ardent apostolic spirit in the cloisters, deserving to be called patron of missionary activities of the Church, together with St Frances Xavier.