Pontiff Promoting Eucharistic Adoration

It Brings About Transformation

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 13, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is calling for a renewal of Eucharistic adoration, which he said helps to bring about a "fundamental transformation."

The Pope said this today upon receiving in audience participants in the plenary assembly of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, who have been meeting to consider the question of Eucharistic adoration.

The Pontiff said he hoped the meeting would help to clarify "the liturgical and pastoral means by which the Church of our time can promote faith in the real presence of the Lord in the Blessed Eucharist, and to ensure that the celebration of Mass fully incorporates the aspect of adoration."

"The doctrine of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine, and of the real presence, are a truth of faith," the Holy Father affirmed, "already evident in sacred Scripture and later confirmed by the Fathers of the Church."

"Adoration must become union," Benedict XVI added, "union with the living Lord and with His mystical Body."

Citing his address at the 2005 World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, Benedict XVI explained that in the Eucharist, "God no longer simply stands before us as the One who is totally Other. He is within us, and we are in him. His dynamic enters into us and then seeks to spread outward to others until it fills the world, so that his love can truly become the dominant measure of the world."

The Pontiff said that in Cologne he also told the youth present that in the Eucharist "we experience the fundamental transformation of violence into love, of death into life. This brings other changes in its wake."



He noted that a renewal of Eucharistic adoration "will only be possible through a greater awareness of the mystery in complete faithfulness to sacred Tradition, and by enhancing liturgical life within our communities."

Benedict XVI also noted "three penitential practices particularly dear to biblical and Christian tradition (prayer, almsgiving and fasting)," and urged the faithful to "encourage one another to rediscover and practice fasting with renewed fervor, not only as a form of asceticism but also as a preparation for the Eucharist and as a spiritual weapon to fight against any disordered attachment to ourselves."