Social dimension of Eucharist
Excerpt from the “Relativo”by H.E. Cardinal Angelo Scola at the opening session of the XI General Assembly of the Synod of the Bishops on Eucharist, October 2, 2005
The complete donation of the self, eucharistically ensured by Christ to the man of every time, is for everybody’ salvation. In this sense, Eucharist is for the world. The synoptic Gospels remind us, in the decisive parable of the good wheat and tare, that the scope of the commitment of Christ’s follower is the world (cf Mt 13 38). It is self-evident how Eucharist has an intrinsic social dimension that cannot be separated from the cosmological and anthropological ones.
The history of the Church, rich in charitable works and creative flurry of civil and political institutions, documents it with a wealth of elements. We will certainly have the opportunity, in these days’ working sessions, to have further confirmation of this from the individual Churches here represented.
Charity is essentially Eucharistic (113), as Eucharist is charity (114) The faithful’s alms-giving on the occasion of Sunday’s mass clearly indicates the importance of this connection. Amongst he innumerable witnesses of holiness related to charity, we would like to recall that of Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Her charisma, deeply marked by a personal relationship with the Eucharistic sacrament, recognized Christ’s love as inextinguishable source of sharing with the poorest and abandoned dying.
In the present time, characterized by the violent transition from, modernity to a new cultural and geopolitical configuration (post-modernity), social urgent needs, that the Christians who live their lives Eucharistically have to face, appear to be particularly marked and differentiated. Globalization, the network society, the new horizons offered by biotechnologies and the inevitable medley of peoples and cultures, unfortunately accompanied by wars, terrorism and inhuman violence, require that the urgent need for social justice and peace be not postponed.
Poverty, and not infrequently, endemic misery a large portion of the world population, especially in Africa, is condemned to, represents a wound that relentlessly judges how authentically Christians, everywhere in the world, live Eucharist. Gathering on each Sunday, in any place in the world, to participate to the same Body and Blood of Christ, imposes the duty to fight tenaciously against any kind of exclusion and economic, social and political justice to which our brothers and sisters are submitted, especially children and women. These types of fighting require adequate criteria resulting from a well-balanced relationship between charity and justice that Eucharist has always, since apostolic times, demanded as necessary for the associated life (cf Corintis11, 17-22; Gc 2,1-6) The Christian community, aware of its peculiar nature, must continue, through adequate analysis and with due distinctions, to look for the right means to face an evil that today is present everywhere in the world and that, more than ever, is crying out for vengeance before God (cf Gen 4, 10).
It is clear that such a relevant question as social justice cannot be dealt with separately from the untiring duty to pursue peace. As a matter of fact, the peace-Eucharist relationship, well expressed in the Latin rite of the fraternal embrace preceding communion, is founded on the firm conviction that “Christ himself is our peace” (Ef 2, 14). The eucharistic origin of the Christian’s action for peace will protect him from two dangerous deceits. That of utopian pacifism on the one hand, and that of a sort of Realpolitik, that considers war as inevitable, on the other. Peace, instead, is a difficult and burdensome task that is always before us and that must be patiently pursued everyday in ourselves and in all relationships, starting from the family ones, to the intermediate community relationships, up to the international ones.
These decisive social implications in the Eucharist action call for the Christian’s contribution to building a civil society in the various cultural areas of humanity. Based on the solidarity and subsidiarity principles that form the social teaching of the Church, Christians promote a civil society based on the dignity and rights of the person, especially the religious freedom right, and of all intermediate bodies, the family in particular.
Christians, with all men of good will and respecting the plurality that characterizes society today, contribute to promote state and international institutions that favour good governance. Beside promoting and regulating a good life at the level of individual nations, all nations must contribute to the need, that cannot be postponed any longer, of building a new world order based on shared and binding rules that guarantee all peoples the possibility to develop, in a balanced and thorough manner, natural and human resources.