GENERAL AUDIENCE: THE EUCHARIST, SACRIFICE OF PRAISE

VATICAN CITY, OCT 11, 2000 (VIS) - In today's general audience, held in St. Peter's Square in the presence of 38,000 pilgrims, the Holy Father spoke on: "The Eucharist, 'sacrificium laudis'."

"The Eucharist," he said, "is the prefect 'sacrifice of praise,' the highest glorification that rises from earth to heaven, 'the source and summit of the Christian life (in which the children of God) offer the divine victim to God and themselves along with it'."

John Paul II recalled that in the Eucharist, "above all, the sacrifice of Christ is made present. Jesus is truly present under the species of bread and wine. ... 'The Eucharist is, above all, a sacrifice: a sacrifice of redemption and, at the same time, of the new covenant, as we believe and as is also clearly professed by the Oriental Churches'."

"The Eucharist," he continued, "is a sacrifice of praise. It is essentially oriented towards full communion between God and man." It is "'thanksgiving' wherein the Son of God unites redeemed humanity to Himself in a hymn of thanksgiving and praise."

The Pope concluded his catechesis by indicating that "in the Eucharist, uniting herself to Christ's sacrifice, the Church gives voice to the praise of the whole of creation. Each of the faithful must correspond, committing himself to offer his existence, his 'body' - as St. Paul says - in 'a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God'."

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