Maria, ster van de evangelisatie

VATICAN CITY, 13 SEP 2011 (VIS) - Given below are excerpts taken from the article "A woman's intuition" by Lucetta Scaraffia, published recently by "L'Osservatore Romano" to coincide with the Pope's visit to Ancona for the closure of the twenty-fifth Italian National Eucharistic Congress.

Below is an unofficial Vatican Radio translation of Pope Benedict XVI's homily on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, 2011

Dear brothers and sisters! 

The feast of Corpus Domini is inseparable from the Holy Thursday Mass of in Caena Domini, in which the institution of the Eucharist is also celebrated. While on the evening of Holy Thursday we relive the mystery of Christ who offers himself to us in the bread broken and wine poured out, today, in celebration of Corpus Domini, this same mystery is proposed to the adoration and meditation of God's people, and the Blessed Sacrament is carried in procession through the streets of towns and villages, to show that the risen Christ walks among us and guides us towards the Kingdom of heaven. Today we openly manifest what Jesus has given us in the intimacy of the Last Supper, because the love of Christ is not confined to the few, but is intended for all. This year during the Mass of Our Lord’s Last Supper on Holy Thursday, I pointed out that the Eucharist is the transformation of the gifts of this land - the bread and wine - intended to transform our lives and usher in the transformation of the world. Tonight I would like to return to this point of view.

Book of Deuteronomy 8:2-3.14b-16a. 

Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments. 
He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD. 
you then become haughty of heart and unmindful of the LORD, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery; 
who guided you through the vast and terrible desert with its saraph serpents and scorpions, its parched and waterless ground; who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock 
and fed you in the desert with manna, a food unknown to your fathers, that he might afflict you and test you, but also make you prosperous in the end. 

Pope leads Corpus Christi procession in Rome

De Paus gaat de Sacramentsprocessie voor in Rome