59 Pope John Paul II

"Celebrating this mystery, we not only renew what Christ did in the Upper Room, but we also enter into the mystery of His death! "We proclaim Your death!"- redeeming death. "Christ is risen!" We are sharers in the Sacred Triduum and the night of Easter. We are sharers in the saving mystery of Christ as we await His coming in glory. Through the institution of The Eucharist we have entered the end times, the time of awaiting Christ's second and definitive coming, when the world will be judged and at the same time the work of redemption will be brought to completion. The Eucharist does not merely speak of all this. In The Eucharist - all this is celebrated - in It all this is fulfilled. Truly The Eucharist is the Great Sacrament of The Church. The Church celebrates The Eucharist, and at the same time The Eucharist makes the Church."

60 Pope John Paul II

"I Am the Living Bread" (Jn 6:51). The message of John's Gospel completes the liturgical picture of this great Eucharistic mystery that we are celebrating today... The words of John's Gospel are the great proclamation of The Eucharist, after the miraculous multiplication of bread near Capernaum. Anticipating as it were the time even before the Eucharist was instituted, Christ revealed what it was. He spoke thus: "I Am the Living Bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this Bread, he will live forever; and the Bread which I shall give for the life of the world is My Flesh" (Jn 6:51). And when these words brought protests from many who were listening Jesus added: "Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of man and drink His Blood, you have no life in you; he who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My Flesh is food indeed, and My Blood is drink indeed. He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in me, and I in him." (Jn 6:53-56).

61 Pope John Paul II

"These are words which concern the very essence of the Eucharist. Behold, Christ came into the world to bestow upon man divine life. He not only proclaimed the Good News but He also instituted the Eucharist which is to make present until the end of time His redeeming mystery. And as the means of expressing this He chose the elements of nature - the bread and wine, the food and drink that man must consume to maintain his life. The Eucharist is precisely this food and drink. This food contains in itself all the power of the Redemption wrought by Christ. In order to live man needs food and drink. In order to gain eternal life man needs the Eucharist. This is the food and drink that transforms man's life and opens before him the way to eternal life. By consuming the Body and Blood of Christ, man bears within himself, already on this earth, the seed of eternal life, for the Eucharist is the sacrament of life in God. Christ says: "As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me." (Jn 6:57).

62 Pope John Paul II

"The eyes of all look to You, and You give them their food in due season (Ps 145.15) In the first reading of today's liturgy Moses speaks to us of God who feeds His people on their journey through the wilderness to the Promised Land: "Remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that He might humble you, testing you to know what is in your heart... (He) fed you in the wilderness with manna which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end." (Dt. 8:2, 16) The image of a pilgrim people in the wilderness, which emerges from these words, speaks also to us who are approaching the end of the second millenium after Christ's birth. In this image all the peoples and nations of the whole earth find a place, and especially those who suffer from hunger." - L'Osservatore Romano, 4 June 1997

63 Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

How to find Christmas peace in a world of unrest? You cannot find peace on the outside but you can find peace on the inside, by letting God do to your soul what Mary let Him do to her body, namely, let Christ be formed in you. As she cooked meals in her Nazarene home, as she nursed her aged cousin, as she drew water at the well, as she prepared the meals of the village carpenter, as she knitted the seamless garment, as she kneaded the dough and swept the floor, she was conscious that Christ was in her; that she was a living Ciborium, a monstrance of the Divine Eucharist, a Gate of Heaven through which a Creator would peer upon creation, a Tower of Ivory up whose chaste body He was to climb "to kiss upon her lips a mystical rose."

As He was physically formed in her, so He wills to be spiritually formed in you. If you knew He was seeing through your eyes, you would see in every fellowman a child of God. If you knew that He worked through your hands, they would bless all the day through. If you knew He spoke through your lips, then your speech, like Peter's, would betray that you had been with the Galilean. If you knew that He wants to use your mind, your will, your fingers, and your heart, how different you would be. If half the world did this there would be no war!

65 Pope John Paul II

"The Piety of the Christian people has always very rightly sensed a profound link between devotion to the Blessed Virgin and worship of the Eucharist: this is a fact that can be seen in the liturgy of both the West and East, in the traditions of religious families, in the modern movements of spirituality, including those of youth and in the pastoral practice of Marian Shrines. Mary guides the faithful to the Eucharist."

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