VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE   
   YEAR XXII - # 129   
   DATE 10-07-2015   
      
   Summary:   
   - "Transform the logic of wastefulness into the logic of communion and   
   community": Francis inaugurates the Fifth National Eucharistic Congress in   
   Bolivia   
   - To the Bolivian clergy: "To pass by without hearing the pain of our people is   
   like listening to the word of God without letting it take root"   
   - To popular movements: the universal destination of goods is not a figure of   
   speech in the Church's social teaching   
   - Other Pontifical Acts   
   - Notice   
      
   ___________________________________________________________   
      
    "Transform the logic of wastefulness into the logic of communion and   
   community": Francis inaugurates the Fifth National Eucharistic Congress in   
   Bolivia   
    Vatican City, 10 July 2015 (VIS) "The Eucharist, bread broken for the life of   
   the world" is the theme of the Fifth National Eucharistic Congress of Bolivia,   
   which the Holy Father inaugurated yesterday with the celebration of Mass in   
   Plaza del Cristo Redentor in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Francis dedicated his   
   homily to the sharing of bread, which Jesus distributed to the multitude with   
   the same hands He raised to heaven to bless God, before almost two million   
   faithful gathered in the square and in the adjacent streets where maxi-screens   
   had been installed.   
    The readings and prayers of the celebration were in Spanish and in indigenous   
   languages: Guarani, Quechua and Aimara. The passage from the Gospel of St. Mark   
   recounted the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.   
    "We have come from a variety of places, areas and villages, to celebrate the   
   living presence of God among us", said the Pope. "We have travelled from our   
   homes and communities to be together as God's holy People. The cross and the   
   mission image remind us of all those communities which were born of the name of   
   Jesus in these lands. We are their heirs. The Gospel which we just heard speaks   
   of a situation much like our own. Like those four thousand people who gathered   
   to hear Jesus, we too want to listen to His words and to receive His life. Like   
   them, we are in the presence of the Master, the Bread of Life.   
    "I am moved to see so many mothers carrying their children on their shoulders,   
   like so many of you here. Carrying them, you bring your lives, the future of   
   your people. You bring all your joys and hopes. You bring the blessing of the   
   earth and all its fruits. You bring the work of your hands, hands which work   
   today in order to weave tomorrow's hopes and dreams. But those people's   
   shoulders were also weighed down by bitter disappointments and sorrows, scarred   
   by experiences of injustice and of justice denied. They bore on their shoulders   
   all the joy and pain of their land. You too bear the memory of your own people.   
   Because every people has a memory, a memory which is passed on from generation   
   to generation, a memory which continues to move forward. Frequently we tire of   
   this journey. Frequently we lack the strength to keep hope alive. How often   
   have   
   we experienced situations which dull our memory, weaken our hope and make us   
   lose our reason for rejoicing! And then a kind of sadness takes over. We think   
   only of ourselves, we forget that we are a people which is loved, a chosen   
   people. And the loss of that memory disorients us, it closes our heart to   
   others, and especially to the poor.   
    "We may feel the way the disciples did, when they saw the crowds of people   
   gathered there. They begged Jesus to send them away, since it was impossible to   
   provide food for so many people. Faced with so many kinds of hunger in our   
   world, we can say to ourselves: 'Things don't add up; we will never manage,   
   there is nothing to be done'. And so our hearts yield to despair. A despairing   
   heart finds it easy to succumb to a way of thinking which is becoming ever more   
   widespread in our world. It is a mentality in which everything has a price,   
   everything can be bought, everything is negotiable. This way of thinking has   
   room only for a select few, while it discards all those who are 'unproductive',   
   unsuitable or unworthy, since clearly those people don't 'add up'. But Jesus   
   once more turns to us and says: 'They don't need to go away; you yourselves,   
   give them something to eat'.   
    "Those words of Jesus have a particular resonance for us today: No one needs   
   to   
   go away, no one has to be discarded; you yourselves, give them something to   
   eat.   
   Jesus speaks these words to us, here in this square. Yes, no one has to be   
   discarded; you, give them something to eat. Jesus' way of seeing things leaves   
   no room for the mentality which would cut bait on the weak and those most in   
   need. Taking the lead, He gives us His own example, He shows us the way   
   forward.   
   What He does can be summed up in three words. He takes a little bread and some   
   fish, He blesses them and then gives them to His disciples to share with the   
   crowd. This is how the miracle takes place. It is not magic or sorcery. With   
   these three gestures, Jesus is able to turn a mentality which discards others   
   into a mindset of communion and community. I would like briefly to look at each   
   of these actions.   
    "Taking. This is the starting-point: Jesus takes His own and their lives very   
   seriously. He looks at them in the eye, and He knows what they are   
   experiencing,   
   what they are feeling. He sees in those eyes all that is present in the memory   
   and the hearts of his people. He looks at it, He ponders it. He thinks of all   
   the good which they can do, all the good upon which they can build. But He is   
   not so much concerned about material objects, cultural treasures or lofty   
   ideas.   
   He is concerned with people. The greatest wealth of a society is measured by   
   the   
   lives of its people, it is gauged by its elderly, who pass on their knowledge   
   and the memory of their people to the young. Jesus never detracts from the   
   dignity of anyone, no matter how little they possess or seem capable of   
   contributing.   
    "Blessing. Jesus takes what is given Him and blesses His heavenly Father. He   
   knows that everything is God's gift. So He does not treat things as "objects",   
   but as part of a life which is the fruit of God's merciful love. He values   
   them.   
   He goes beyond mere appearances, and in this gesture of blessing and praise He   
   asks the Father for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Blessing has this double   
   aspect: thanksgiving and transformative power. t is a recognition that life is   
   always a gift which, when placed in the hands of God, starts to multiply. Our   
   Father never abandons us; he makes everything multiply.   
    "Giving. With Jesus, there can be no 'taking' which is not a 'blessing', and   
   no   
   blessing which is not also a 'giving'. Blessing is always mission, its purpose   
   is to share what we ourselves have received. For it is only in giving, in   
   sharing, that we find the source of our joy and come to experience salvation.   
   Giving makes it possible to refresh the memory of God's holy people, called and   
   sent forth to bring the joy of salvation to others. The hands which Jesus lifts   
   to bless God in heaven are the same hands which gave bread to the hungry crowd.   
   We can imagine how those people passed the loaves of bread and the fish from   
   hand to hand, until they came to those farthest away. Jesus generated a kind of   
   electrical current among His followers, as they shared what they had, made it a   
   gift for others, and so ate their fill. Unbelievably, there were even   
   leftovers:   
   enough to fill seven baskets. A memory which is taken, blessed and given always   
   satisfies people's hunger.   
    "The Eucharist is 'bread broken for the life of the world'. That is the theme   
   of the Fifth Eucharistic Congress to be held in Tarija, which today we   
   inaugurate. The Eucharist is a sacrament of communion, which draws us out of   
   our   
   individualism in order to live together as disciples. It gives us the certainty   
   that all that we have, all that we are, if it is taken, blessed and given, can,   
   by God's power, by the power of His love, become bread of life for all. The   
   Church is a community of remembrance. Hence, in fidelity to the Lord's command,   
   she never ceases to say: 'Do this in remembrance of me'. Generation after   
   generation, throughout the world, she celebrates the mystery of the Bread of   
   Life. She makes it present and she gives it to us. Jesus asks us to share in   
   His   
   life, and through us He allows this gift to multiply in our world. We are not   
   isolated individuals, separated from one another, but rather a people of   
   remembrance, a remembrance ever renewed and ever shared with others. A life of   
   remembrance needs others. It demands exchange, encounter and a genuine   
   solidarity capable of entering into the mindset of taking, blessing and giving.   
   It demands the logic of love.   
    Pope Francis concluded his homily by recalling that Mary, like many of the   
   mothers present, "bore in her heart the memory of her people. She pondered the   
   life of her Son. She personally experienced God's grandeur and joyfully   
   proclaimed that He 'fills the hungry with good things'. Today may Mary be our   
   model. Like her, may we trust in the goodness of the Lord, who does great   
   things   
   with the lowliness of his servants".   
      
   ___________________________________________________________   
      
    To the Bolivian clergy: "To pass by without hearing the pain of our people is   
   like listening to the word of God without letting it take root"   
    Vatican City, 10 July 2015 (VIS) - "How can you love God, whom you do not see,   
   if you do not love your brother whom you do see?" was the question Pope Francis   
   posed to the four thousand Bolivian priests, men and women religious and   
   seminarians whom he met yesterday afternoon in the "Coliseo Don Bosco", a   
   school   
   managed by Salesian Fathers. The Holy Father commented on the passage from the   
   Gospel about the blind man Bartimaeus, a beggar who, hearing Jesus approach   
   with   
   the apostles and a large crowd of followers, calls out to be healed.   
    "If we translate this, forcing the language", said the Pope, "around Jesus we   
   find the bishops, priests, nuns, seminarians, active laypeople, all those who   
   follow Jesus, listening to Him, and the faithful people of God".   
    "Two things about this story jump out at us and make an impression", remarked   
   Francis. "On the one hand, there is the cry of a beggar, and on the other, the   
   different reactions of the disciples. Let us think of the different reactions   
   of   
   the bishops, the priests, the nuns, the seminarians, and the cries that are   
   heard or that go unheeded. It is as if the Evangelist wanted to show us the   
   effect which Bartimaeus' cry had on people's lives, on the lives of Jesus'   
   followers. How did they react when faced with the suffering of that man on the   
   side of the road, in his misery, whom nobody noticed, to whom nobody gave   
   anything ... who did not enter into that circle of the Lord's followers".   
    The Gospel tells us of the three responses to the cry of the blind man: they   
   passed by, they told him to be quiet, and they told him to take heart and get   
   up.   
    "They passed by. Perhaps some of those who passed by did not even hear his   
   shouting, because they were not listening. They were with Jesus ... they   
   wanted to   
   hear Jesus. They did not listen. Passing by is the response of indifference, of   
   avoiding other people's problems because they do not affect us. It is not my   
   problem. We do not hear them, we do not recognise them. Deafness. Here we have   
   the temptation to see suffering as something natural, to take injustice for   
   granted. And yes, there are people like this. I am here with God, with my   
   consecrated life, and yes, it is natural that there are sick people ... the   
   poor ...   
   people who suffer; and so it is also natural that a cry or a plea for help does   
   not attract my attention. And we say to ourselves, 'This is nothing unusual;   
   this is the way things are'. It is the response born of a blind, closed heart,   
   a   
   heart which has lost the ability to be touched and hence the possibility to   
   change. A heart used to passing by without letting itself be touched; a life   
   which passes from one thing to the next, without ever sinking roots in the   
   lives   
   of the people around us, simply because it is part of the elite that follows   
   the   
   Lord. We could call this 'the spirituality of zapping'. It is always on the   
   move, but it has nothing to show for it. There are people who keep up with the   
   latest news, the most recent best sellers, but they never manage to connect   
   with   
   others, to strike up a relationship, to get involved, even with the Lord they   
      
   --- MPost/386 v1.21   
    * Origin: Sursum Corda! BBS=Huntsville AL=bbs.sursum-corda.com (1:396/45)