VATICAN CITY, OCT 2, 2005 (VIS) - In the Vatican Basilica at 9.30 a.m., the Holy Father presided at a Eucharistic concelebration for the opening of the Eleventh Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which is meeting to consider the theme: "The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church." Concelebrating with the Pope were 55 cardinals, 7 patriarchs, 59 archbishops, 123 bishops and 81 priests.
In his homily, the Pope commented on the reading from Isaiah and from today's Gospel, which both use the image of the vine. "God waits for us. ... In this very moment when we are celebrating the Eucharist, when we are inaugurating the Synod on the Eucharist, He comes to meet us. ... Will this find a reply? Or does it happen with us as with the vineyard, about which God says in Isaiah: 'He expected it to yield fine grapes; wild grapes were all it yielded'? Is our Christian life often not perhaps rather vinegar than wine? Is it self-pity, conflict, indifference?"
Benedict XVI went on: "The good grapes which God was expecting - says the prophet - should have consisted in justice and uprightness. Instead, wild grapes bring violence, bloodshed and oppression, which make people groan under the yoke of injustice. In the Gospel the image changes: the vine produces good grapes, but the tenants keep them for themselves They are not willing to give them to the owner. ... We men to whom creation was, so to say, entrusted to manage, usurp it. We alone want to be the landlords. We want to own the world and our own lives in an unlimited way. God is our stumbling block. Either we simply make Him a devout expression or we deny Him everything, He is banished from public life, thus losing all meaning.
"Tolerance, which admits God... in private, but denies Him in the public domain, the reality of the world and of our lives, is not tolerance but hypocrisy. Yet, wherever man makes himself the only master of the world and of himself, justice cannot exist. There, the only arbiter is power and interest."
The Holy Father went on to point out how in today's readings "the judgement proclaimed by our Lord Jesus refers above all to the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70. But the threat of judgement also concerns us, the Church in Europe, Europe and the West in general. With this Gospel, the Lord is also crying out to us the words which in the Apocalypse He addressed to the Church of Ephesus: 'If you will not repent, I shall come to you and take your lamp-stand from its place.' Light can also be taken away from us. ... Lord, help us to convert! Give us all the grace of true renewal! Do not allow your light in our midst to go out!"
"However, at this point we ask ourselves ... is the last word a threat? No! The promise is there, and it is the last, the essential, word. ... 'I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty.' With these words of the Lord, John shows us the last, and true outcome of the story of God's vineyard. God never fails. In the end He wins, love wins."
"Thus, in the end, these parables lead to the mystery of the Eucharist, where the Lord gives us the bread of life and the wine of His love, and invites us to the feast of eternal love. ... If we remain united to Him, then we will also bear fruit; then we will no longer produce the vinegar of self-sufficiency, of discontentment with God and His creation, but the good wine of joy in God and of love towards our neighbor."
Benedict XVI concluded by invoking the Lord's grace so that, during the Synod, "not only will we say beautiful things about the Eucharist, but above all we live off its strength."
SE/VINE:EUCHARIST/... VIS 20051003 (690)
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