ACI Prensa Staff, Aug 18, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).
With less than a month to go until the 53rd International Eucharistic Congress (IEC 2024) in Quito, Ecuador, Father Juan Carlos Garzón, secretary-general for the event, said it will be an opportunity to “put the Eucharistic Christ at the center of the life of the Church and the world.”
In a statement to the Spanish edition of EWTN News, Garzón highlighted that IEC 2024 will be “like returning to the essence of our faith.” Ecuador was consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus 150 years ago, the priest noted, so the Eucharistic Congress will also be a great opportunity for the country to commemorate that event and delve deeper into its history of faith.
Fifty-one delegations from around the world have already registered to participate in the IEC 2024 program, which will begin with an international theological symposium to be held at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, where approximately 450 people will attend.
“Theologians from all over the world are coming to explore more deeply the relationship between the Eucharist and fraternity, given that the theme of our Eucharistic Congress is ‘Fraternity to Heal the World,’” the secretary-general said.
After the symposium, IEC 2024 will formally begin on Sept. 8. On that day, 1,600 children will make their first Communion. For Garzón, this will be a reminder of the purity with which we must receive the Lord in the Eucharist, “which can sometimes be lost over the years.”
“These children remind us of the purity that is part of this relationship with God,” he added.
Nearly 5,000 people will be present at the congress, including bishops, laypeople and religious, who will give their witness to fraternity. Those days in Quito, the secretary-general said, will allow us to learn about the different wounds afflicting the world and at the same time to make a contribution to healing them.
“It’s a very beautiful week. On the first day we have asked the bishops, who come from all over the world, to go to the parishes in Quito to meet with our people. Then, on Thursday of that week, Masses will be held in the [city’s] historic center in the various languages [of the participants], and on Saturday, Sept. 14, we will have a great Eucharistic procession,” Garzón explained.
The closing Mass, on Sept. 15, will be celebrated by Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who will represent the pope during IEC 2024.
Finally, the secretary-general wanted people to know that they can still register for the event through the official IEC 2024 website.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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We read of “Christ at the center of life in the world,” and “Theologians from all over the world are coming to explore more deeply the relationship between the Eucharist and fraternity…”
If St. Paul had not crossed over to Macedonia and the “world” of the reasonable Greek cosmos, would there ever have unfolded the coherence of faith and reason (the Logos) as is made possible by and in the Incarnation-event? Or, instead, would an unrelieved pluralism/profusion of alternatives remained totally dominant–ranging from the symbolic mystery religions infesting the late Roman Empire; to today’s rationalistic progressivism, or nihilism, or technocracy, or identify politics in the West; to the inscrutable, arbitrary, and even fatalistic fideism of Islam, from Morocco to Indonesia; together with all of the other expressive and sometimes purifying, but still only natural religions in the East and elsewhere?
Benedict remarks that the confluence of Christianity and Greek thought is an underappreciated and providential moment in universal human history. In John’s Gospel, the term Word captures the narrow path–by meaning revelation (the Mind of God) to the Jews and, translated as Logos in the Greek, meaning to the Greeks both word and Reason. As more than a conceptual bridge, the term Word/Logos stands for the fact of the incarnate divinity of Christ descending into the world and, therefore, the coherence of gifted faith in Him and our reasoning within our finite but confirmed minds.
Is there any durable coherence at all, in the long run, absent the Incarnation (and the gifted and sacramental Real Presence)?
The inborn and universal natural law (meaningful “fraternity”) confirmed and fulfilled in the self-disclosure of the Triune One. The Alpha and the Omega, also as the midpoint and the center of universal human history. (A lucid Protestant treatment of the Word/Logos is provided by the Scottish William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series, “The Gospel of John.” vol. 1, Westminster Press, 1975, pp. 26-40).
So, yes, the International Eucharistic Congress presenting “Christ as the center of life in the world.”
To put the Eucharist Christ at the center of the Church and world is not a fetish that forms symbolic brotherhood, or as Pope Francis suggests the consumption of the miracle of the Eucharist saves. Rather it is to become like Christ in belief and manner. That’s the essence of our salvation and formation of brotherhood bonded in divinely revealed love. To receive the Holy Eucharist absent of contrition and willingness to become what we consume, actually offends who it is we receive and harms us spiritually.
Transubstantiation remains the clearest accurate diagram for explaining what occurs on the altar. That Christ is not present symbolically, nor is he in the bread and wine or under the two species. Both bread and wine become the real person, the whole person of Christ [different in appearance as he appears in his natural existence]. Greece gave us the concept of being. Better said, what Aristotle said exists are beings. Arab philosopher Ibn Sina quoted by Aquinas in De Veritate [On Truth] in the initial pages in his treatise confirmed what is first evident to the intellect is being [or beings not the metaphysical notion of being as being].
Ousia, the Gk word for substance, means an entity, an existing thing independent from other things. While the accidents of bread and wine remain the same at the priest’s words of consecration, the substance of both are changed to become the living Christ. What Aquinas called, although a mystery, a miracle of love. As the Apostles consumed him as the spoken Word and finally as the Eucharistic Word made flesh at the Last Supper, we receive him body and blood, soul and divinity through the gift conferred to the Apostles and passed on to us through their successors both bishop and presbyter. Brotherhood, true fraternity is achieved exclusively in the Eucharistic unity of the Mystical Body of Christ in the world and in heaven.
YEAR OF THE EUCHARIST 2008
“I AM THE LIVING BREAD” JOHN 6:51 – COMMUNION THANKSGIVING: THE DIVINE PRAISES
Blessed be God.
Blessed be His holy name.
Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true man.
Blessed be the holy name of Jesus Christ.
Blessed be His loving and sacred Heart.
Blessed be His Body and Blood.
Blessed be His passion and resurrection.
Blessed be Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Giver of life.
Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.
Blessed be Holy Mary, the Virgin Mother of God.
Blessed be her Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
Blessed be God in His angels and in His saints.
Blessed be our God, always now and for ever and ever. Amen.
•This Thanksgiving prayer takes 1-2 minutes and fills in a glaring omission, that of thanking God for the great gift of the Holy Communion. There are prayers after Communion now, but they are still a ‘give us’ not a ‘thank you’ – eucharistia. What guest with what manners would rush out after a dinner without complimenting/thanking their host? The exposition of the Blessed Sacrament takes place par excellence at every Holy Communion. Can the Body and Blood of Our Lord be ever more exposed in this life than at Holy Communion?
•More important still, is to receive Holy Communion, the Body and Blood of Christ, worthily (1 Corinthians 11:28-29, Matthew 5:23, 6:15) – to be free, beforehand, from serious sin, to pray at least the biblical act of contrition, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner. Remember me, O Lord, in Thy kingdom”, and to go to Confession when necessary.
•Rightly we complain about disrespect shown to the Blessed Sacrament. But what does shunting the tabernacle from its front-and-center location to the sidelines tell the Faithful? Towards what do we genuflect? Restoring the tabernacle with its perpetual candle to the middle of the altar area –its universal location for many centuries and still its location in some churches– would rectify the schism between the altar and the tabernacle and would showcase the Eucharist as the center of Church life. Also, an image of the Last Supper by the altar, such as the one at Saint Maximilian Kolbe church in Mississauga, the Consolata Missionaries’ chapel in Toronto and in many other Orthodox and Catholic churches, from Rio de Janeiro to Jerusalem, would call to mind the roots of the Eucharist.
Slavic Christian Society / Société Chrétienne Slave / Slăviansko Xristianskoe Sŏbranie, Mississauga, http://slavxrist.org 2000, 2004, 2008.
Never heard of the Slavic Christian Society.
Have now!