By Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Simple gestures of piety, such as receiving Communion, sow harmony among humanity and can be acts of rebellion against evil, Pope Francis said.
In a video message to the International Eucharistic Congress in Quito, Ecuador, released by the Vatican Sept. 8, the pope highlighted the power of the Eucharist through the story of German Trinitarian Sister Angela Autsch, who was imprisoned by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz where she died in 1944.
Before her arrest, she invited her family members, even distant ones, to receive the Eucharist and resist the evils of Nazism “with simple and, in certain environments, dangerous gestures, to come as close as possible to the sacrament at the altar, to rebel by receiving Communion,” the pope said.
He noted that for Sister Autsch, promoting frequent Communion and prayer for the church and the pope “was to find in the Eucharist a bond that strengthens the vigor of the church itself” and its members, as well as a way of organizing “a resistance that the enemy cannot thwart because it does not respond to a human design.”
“These simple gestures are what make us more aware that if one member suffers, the whole body suffers with it,” Pope Francis said, urging participants in the congress to recover “a radical fraternity with God and among people.”
The 53rd International Eucharistic Congress was scheduled to take place in the Ecuadorian capital Sept. 8-15 under the theme, “Fraternity to save the world.” The congress coincides with the 150th anniversary of Ecuador’s consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Of the many lessons one can gather from the Eucharist, Pope Francis said the congress’ focus on fraternity highlights “an essential condition for a new world, a more just world, a more human world.”
The early church fathers preached about how the sign of bread “enkindles in the people of God the desire for fraternity,” he said. “In the same way that bread cannot be made with a single grain, we also must walk together since being many, we are one body, one bread.”
“This is how we grow as brothers, this is how we grow as church, united by the water of baptism and purified by the Holy Spirit,” the pope said, calling for “a deep fraternity, born of union with God, born of letting ourselves be ground, like wheat, in order to become bread, the body of Christ.”
“We are one, in the one Lord of our life; we are one in a way that we are not able to fully understand, but what we do understand is that only in this unity can we serve the world and heal it,” he said.
