II. Celebrating the Sacraments

74. A prominent place need to be given to the celebration of the sacraments, as actions of Christ and of the Church ordered to the worship of God, to the sanctification of people and to the building up of the ecclesial community. In the knowledge that in them Christ himself is acting through the Holy Spirit, the sacraments should celebrated with the greatest care and under appropriate conditions. The Particular Churches on the continent will have to make efforts to strengthen their pastoral practice with regard to the sacraments so that their deepest reality is understood. The Synod Fathers have stressed the need for this in order to respond to two dangers: on the one hand, certain sectors of the Church seem to have lost sight of the genuine meaning of the sacraments and might trivialize the mysteries being celebrated; while on the other hand, many of the baptized, following customs and traditional practices, continue to have recourse to the Sacraments at significant moments of their life, yet do not live in accordance with the Church's teaching.¹²²

The Eucharist

75. The Eucharist, the greatest gift of Christ to the Church, makes present in mystery the sacrifice of Christ offered for our salvation: “in the most blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch”.¹²³ The pilgrim Church draws sustenance from the Eucharist, “the source and summit of the Christian life”,¹²⁴ and finds there the source of all her hope. The Eucharist in fact “spurs us on our journey through history and plants a seed of living hope in our daily commitment to the work before us”.¹²⁵

We are all invited to profess faith in the Eucharist, “the pledge of future glory”, in the certainty that the communion with Christ now experienced by pilgrims in their mortal lives is a foretaste of their ultimate encounter with him on that day when “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn 3:2). The Eucharist is a “taste of eternity within time”, it is God's presence and our communion with that presence; as the memorial of Christ's Passover, it is by its very nature a bearer of grace within human history. It opens us to the future of God; as communion with Christ, with his body and blood, it is a sharing in God's own eternal life.¹²⁶

Reconciliation

76. Along with the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Reconciliation must also exercise a fundamental role in the recovery of hope: “a personal experience of the forgiveness of God for each one of us is, in fact, the essential foundation of every hope for our future”.¹²⁷ One of the roots of the hopelessness that assails many people today is found in their inability to see themselves as sinners and to allow themselves to be forgiven, an inability often resulting from the isolation of those who, by living as if God did not exist, have no one from whom they can seek forgiveness. Those who, on the other hand, acknowledge that they are sinners, and entrust themselves to the mercy of the Heavenly Father, experience the joy of an authentic liberation and can continue life without being trapped in their own misery.¹²⁸ In this way they receive the grace of a new beginning, and again find reasons for hope.

For this reason the Sacrament of Reconciliation needs to be revitalized in the Church in Europe. It must be reaffirmed, however, that the form of the sacrament is the personal confession of sins followed by individual absolution. This encounter between the penitent and the priest should be encouraged in any of the forms provided for in the rite of the sacrament. Faced with the widespread loss of the sense of sin and the growth of a mentality marked by relativism and subjectivism in morality, every ecclesial community needs to provide for the serious formation of consciences.¹²⁹ The Synod Fathers have insisted on the recognition of the reality of personal sin and the necessity of personal forgiveness by God through the ministry of the priest. Collective absolutions are not an alternative way of administering the Sacrament of Reconciliation.¹³⁰

77. I appeal to priests and I encourage them to give generously of their time in hearing confessions and to be an example to others by their own regular reception of the Sacrament of Penance. I urge them to keep current in the field of moral theology, in order to approach knowledgeably the issues which have lately arisen in personal and social morality. Furthermore, they should be particularly concerned for the concrete living situation of the faithful, and capable of patiently guiding them to a recognition of the requirements of Christian moral law, so as to help them experience the sacrament as a joyous encounter with the mercy of the Heavenly Father.¹³¹

Prayer and life

78. Together with the celebration of the Eucharist, there is also a need to promote other forms of community prayer ¹³² and to help people to rediscover the bond linking the latter and liturgical prayer. In particular, in fidelity to the tradition of the Latin Church, different forms of Eucharistic worship outside of Mass should be promoted: private adoration, Eucharistic exposition and processions, which should be seen as an expression of faith in the continuing real presence of the Lord in the Sacrament of the Altar.¹³³ In both personal and communal celebrations of the Liturgy of the Hours, which the Second Vatican Council recommended as also of great value for the lay faithful,¹³⁴ efforts should be made to show their relationship with the Eucharistic mystery. Families should be encouraged to make time to pray together, and thus to interpret the whole of marriage and family life in the light of the Gospel. In this way, starting in the family and in hearing the word of God, a domestic liturgy will gradually emerge, which will then mark every event in the life of the family.¹³⁵

Every form of community prayer presupposes individual prayer. Between the individual and God there arises that true converse which finds expression in praise, thanksgiving and petition addressed to the Father through Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit. Personal prayer, which is as it were the very breath of the Christian, should never be neglected. There is also a need to help the faithful to rediscover the link between this personal prayer and liturgical prayer.

79. Special consideration also needs to be given to popular piety.¹³⁶ Widely diffused in different areas of Europe through confraternities, pilgrimages and processions to numerous shrines, it enriches the unfolding of the liturgical year and inspires traditions and customs in families and in society. All these forms of popular piety should be carefully evaluated through a pastoral effort of promotion and renewal aimed at helping them to accent those elements which authentically express the wisdom of the People of God. An example of such devotions is surely the Holy Rosary. In this Year dedicated to the Rosary, I once more heartily recommend its recitation, for “the Rosary, reclaimed in its full meaning, goes to the very heart of Christian life; it offers a familiar yet fruitful spiritual and educational opportunity for personal contemplation, the formation of the People of God, and the new evangelization”.¹³⁷

With regard to popular piety, constant vigilance is needed in order to prevent ambiguities in certain of its manifestations, to preserve them from secularizing influences, crass commercialization or even the risk of superstition, and to keep them within sound and authentic forms. This calls for a work of education aimed at explaining how popular piety must always find expression in a way consonant with the Church's liturgy and in relation to the sacraments.

80. It must not be forgotten that the “spiritual worship holy and acceptable to God” (cf. Rom 12:1) takes place above all in daily life, lived in charity through the free and generous gift of self, even at times of apparent powerlessness. In this way life comes to be inspired by indestructible hope, for it is entrusted to the certainty of God's power and the victory of Christ alone. It becomes a life filled with the consolations of God, with which we, in turn, are called to bring comfort to those whom we encounter along the way (cf. 2 Cor 1:4).

The Lord's Day

81. The Lord's day is a a highly evocative and defining moment in the celebration of the Gospel of hope.

Nowadays it is more and more difficult for Christians to be able fully to experience Sunday as the day of encounter with the Lord. Not infrequently Sunday is reduced to a “weekend”, a simple time of recreation. Thus there is need for a structured pastoral programme with educational, spiritual and social components which can help people to experience the true meaning of Sunday.

82. Consequently I renew my encouragement to “recover the deepest meaning of the day of the Lord.¹³⁸ Sunday should sanctified by sharing in the Eucharist and by rest enriched with Christian joy and fellowship. It needs to be celebrated as the heart of all worship, an unceasing prefigurement of unending life, which reinvigorates hope and encourages us on our journey. There should be no fear, then, of defending the Lord's day against every attack and making every effort to ensure that in the organization of labour it is safeguarded, so that it can be a day meant for man, to the benefit of all society. Indeed, were Sunday deprived of its original meaning and it were no longer possible to make suitable time for prayer, rest, fellowship and joy, the result could very well be that “people stay locked within a horizon so limited that they can no longer see 'the heavens'. Hence, though ready to celebrate, they are really incapable of doing so”.¹³⁹ And without the dimension of celebration, hope would have no home in which to dwell.