06/25/00

Rome’s International Eucharistic Conference and Chicago’s Field of Faith

The following column was written by Cardinal George before traveling to New York City and Rome.

Archbishop Edward Egan, born in Oak Park but most recently the Bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut, was installed as Archbishop of New York on June 19. The first Bishop of Chicago, Bishop William Quarter, came here, to what was a frontier town in 1843, from New York City, where he had been pastor of St. Mary’s Church. Now Chicago gives one or her own priests, a product of our community, our parishes and our seminaries, to New York as its Archbishop. Naturally, I’ll be there; and I ask you to remember Archbishop Egan in your prayers.

From his installation, I fly to Rome for the International Eucharistic Congress the Holy Father has called for the Jubilee Year. There are four major catechetical sessions during the week of the Congress. I will speak on Tuesday, reflecting on the Eucharist in the world. The Holy Father will give his usual Wednesday catechesis, and on Thursday and Friday the Archbishops of Vienna and of Mexico City will speak. Before the Congress comes to an end in Rome, I will be back in Chicago to get ready for our own Archdiocesan Jubilee celebration in Soldier Field. Saturday evening, June 24, the vigil of Corpus Christi, is the time when representatives from all the institutions of the Archdiocese will come together around the altar of the Lord for Mass and procession and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

The parishes have received free tickets for this celebration, and I am confident all will be represented. The Millennium Committee and our Office of Divine Worship have worked intensely to prepare for the moment when Soldier Field becomes again, as it was during the International Eucharistic Congress held in Chicago in 1926, a Field of Faith.

At the beginning of the U.S. Bishops Spring meeting in Milwaukee last week, Bishop Fiorenza of Houston, the president of the Conference, spoke about reconciliation in society today. He said, “Nothing touches people more than a story of reconciliation, and yet nothing seems harder to achieve, whether we are talking about the international conflict or instances of road rage. Aware of the benefits of peace and good will, people often come close to reconciliation only to break off in recriminations and renewed anger. Apparently some invest too much in their grudges to understand fully the advantage of interior peace and good will.

“But it is the ministry of reconciliation that we have been given. Be it reconciling the criminal with the victims, the husband or wife at odds over their marriage, the child and parent too angry to see how much they actually love one another, the employer and workers, the landlord and tenants, the Catholic and Protestant of Northern Ireland, the Palestinian and the Israeli, or the Elian Gonzalez family and the nations whose antagonism they symbolize: the Church exists always ready to exercise the ministry of reconciliation in these situations, if we are given the opportunity.”

“If we are given the opportunity...” Spiritually, the opportunity for reconciliation is given each time the Church celebrates the Eucharist. Reconciled to God in baptism and through the sacrament of penance, we go to the Eucharist as the great sacrament of reconciliation, in which the entire body of Christ becomes visibly one in her Eucharistic Lord. We receive Holy Communion together because we are in communion, which means “in union with.”

To be reconciled ourselves and ministers of reconciliation in the world today, to be a Eucharistic people, we must be free. Only a free man, a free woman, is able to bring together people who are isolated by their own and society’s sins. Gospel freedom, the freedom of Christ who gives himself freely for our salvation (Eucharistic prayer II), is greater than the freedom this world understands. In Christ, we are free to act, to do what we need to do, what we should do. The world understands this freedom, the freedom to act; but if freedom is reduced to actions willed by each of us, the world becomes a brittle place. Each one’s freedom is limited by the action of others; and each action is then negotiated, often in a court of law, so that life becomes a contest of wills.

The freedom Christ gives us with himself in the Eucharist is more than freedom to do; it is also freedom to give ourselves totally, even to the point of self-sacrifice, as Christ gave himself to death on the cross. The world understands generosity and even rewards it. The world has a more difficult time understanding self-sacrifice. The crisis in Christian marriage, in consecrated life and ordained priesthood is a crisis of Christian freedom, the freedom to give oneself totally to God, to a spouse, to the Church.

The freedom we receive in the Eucharist is, then, freedom to do and freedom to give; but more, it is freedom to receive. This aspect of freedom in Christ is problematic, for receiving means admitting we are needy, and no one likes to admit that. Yet if we are not free to receive, we are not free in Christ. In Christ, all is gift: the Gospel, the sacraments of the Church, apostolic governance, the Church herself—all is gift. To be free is to receive the gifts Christ bestows on us. To be free is also to receive all those whom Christ loves. Each human difference is a gift for all, and it must be welcomed, desired, received by all. In Christ’s body, everyone gives and everyone receives. Everyone has something to share and everyone is needy.

Whether you are in Soldier Field on June 24 or not, pray for the freedom necessary to become a reconciler in the year of Jubilee. Pray for the freedom, in Christ, to act, to give, and to receive. Pray for yourself and for me and for all in the Archdiocese of Chicago. God bless you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago

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