(Vatican Radio) Below please find a Vatican Radio translation of Pope Francis’
homily for Mass celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi, Thursday 30 May 2013.
Dear brothers and sisters,
In the Gospel we have just heard, there
is an expression of Jesus that always strikes me: “Give you them to eat. (Lk 9:13)”
Starting from this sentence, I let myself be guided by three words: discipleship,
fellowship and sharing.
1. First of all: who are those to whom we are to give
to eat? The answer is found at the beginning of the Gospel: it is the crowd, the multitude.
Jesus is in the midst of the people: He welcomes them, talks to them, He cures them,
He shows them the mercy of God. In their midst, he chooses the twelve Apostles to
be with Him, and like Him, to immerse themselves in the concrete situations of the
world. People follow Him, listen to Him, because Jesus speaks and acts in a new way,
with the authority of someone who is authentic and consistent, who speaks and acts
with truth, who gives the hope that comes from God, who is revelation of the face
of a God who is love - and the people with joy, bless God.
This evening we
are the crowd of [which] the Gospel [tells]: let us also strive to follow Jesus to
listen to him, to enter into communion with Him in the Eucharist, to accompany Him
and in order that He accompany us. Let us ask ourselves: how do I follow Jesus? Jesus
speaks in silence in the Mystery of the Eucharist and every time reminds us that to
follow Him means to come out of ourselves and make of our own lives, not a possession,
but a gift to Him and to others.
2. Let us take a step forward: whence is born
the invitation that Jesus makes to his disciples to feed the multitude themselves?
It is born from two elements: first, the crowd, having followed Jesus, now finds itself
in the open, away from inhabited areas, as evening falls, and then, because of the
concern of the disciples, who asked Jesus to dismiss the crowd, that they might seek
food and lodging in the nearby towns (cf. Lk 9:12). Faced with the neediness of the
crowd, the solution of the disciples is that every man should take care of himself:
“Dismiss the crowd!” [the disciples say]. How many times do we Christians have this
temptation! We do not care for the needs of others, dismissing them with a pitiful,
“God help you.” Jesus’ solution, on the other hand, goes in another direction, a direction
that surprises the disciples: [He says], “You give them something to eat.”
But how is it that we are to feed a multitude? “We have only five loaves and
two fish, unless we go and buy food for all these people.” But Jesus is not discouraged.
He asks the disciples to seat people in communities of fifty people, He raises his
eyes to heaven, recites the blessing, breaks the loaves, and gives them to the disciples
for distribution.
It is a moment of profound communion: the crowd,
whose thirst has been quenched by the word of the Lord, is now nourished by His bread
of life – and they all ate their fill, the Evangelist tells us.
This evening,
we too are gathered around the Lord’s table, the table of the Eucharistic Sacrifice,
in which He gives us once again His body, makes present the one sacrifice of the Cross.
It is in listening to his Word, in nourishing ourselves with his Body and his Blood,
that He makes us go from being a multitude to being a community, from [being strangers]
to being [in] communion. The Eucharist is the sacrament of communion, which brings
us out from individualism to live together our journey in His footsteps, our faith
in Him. We ought, therefore, to ask ourselves before the Lord: How do I live the
Eucharist? Do I live it anonymously or as a moment of true communion with the Lord,
[and] also with many brothers and sisters who share this same table? How are our Eucharistic
celebrations?
3. A final element: whence is born the multiplication of the
loaves? The answer lies in the invitation of Jesus to his disciples: “You yourselves
give [to them]...,” “give,” share. What do the disciples share? What little they have:
five loaves and two fishes. But it is precisely those loaves and fishes that in God’s
hands feed the whole crowd.
And it is the disciples, bewildered by the inability
of their means, by the poverty of what they have at their disposal, who invite the
people to sit down, and - trusting the Word of Jesus – distribute the loaves and fishes
that feed the crowd. This tells us that in the Church, but also in society, a keyword
that we need not fear is “solidarity,” that is, knowing how to place what we have
at God’s disposal: our humble abilities, because [it is] only in the sharing, in the
giving of them, that our lives will be fecund, will bear fruit. Solidarity: a word
upon which the spirit of the world looks unkindly! Tonight, once again, the Lord
distributes for us the bread which is His body, He makes a gift of Himself. We, too,
are experiencing the “solidarity of God” with man, a solidarity that never runs out,
a solidarity that never ceases to amaze us: God draws near to us; in the sacrifice
of the Cross He lowers Himself, entering into the darkness of death in order to give
us His life, which overcomes evil, selfishness, death.
Jesus this evening
gives Himself to us in the Eucharist, shares our same journey – indeed, He becomes
food, real food that sustains our life even at times when the going is rough, when
obstacles slow down our steps. The Lord in the Eucharist makes us follow His path,
that of service, of sharing, of giving – and what little we have, what little we are,
if shared, becomes wealth, because the power of God, which is that of love, descends
into our poverty to transform it.
Let us ask ourselves this evening, adoring
the Christ truly present in the Eucharist: do I let myself be transformed by Him?
Do I let the Lord who gives Himself to me, guide me to come out more and more from
my little fence to get out and be not afraid to give, to share, to love Him and others?
Discipleship,
communion and sharing. Let us pray that participation in the Eucharist move us always
to follow the Lord every day, to be instruments of communion, to share with Him and
with our neighbor who we are. Then our lives will be truly fruitful. Amen.