First fruits of all other days

This past week saw the gathering of the 49th International Eucharistic Congress. It was held in the city of Quebec in Canada to mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of that city, the first permanent French settlement in North America.

Some French pioneers with deep faith, wanting to evangelize the Aboriginal peoples and provide spiritual support for the colonists, were joined by the Recollet missionary priests in 1615 and by the Jesuits in 1625. Together with the Ursulines and the Augustinian nuns who arrived in 1639, they laid the foundations of the Catholic Church in New France. Three hundred and fifty years ago, in 1658, Monsignor Francois de Laval was appointed the first bishop of New France.

This year, we are also observing in the United States the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the (then) Dioceses of Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Louisville (Bardstown), and the elevation of Baltimore to the rank of an archdiocese. It may help to put all of this into perspective when we consider that the Catholic Church arrived in Mexico in 1530 and in Lima in the year 1541.

The Eucharistic Congress is a special moment in the life of the Universal Church. In order to mark this gift of grace for all of us, I would like to share with you in this week's Visit the following excerpt from the basic theological document of the Congress entitled "The Eucharist, God's Gift for the Life of the World."

This section is a reflection on the centrality of the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist in the life of each Christian from the very beginning of the Church:

The Church is the community of disciples that professes its belonging to the Lord by its distinctive sign: the practice of mutual love and fraternal love for all. We cannot love with the same love as Christ without constantly receiving this love from Him. His new commandment is not a simple moral ideal offered for our freedom. It is a covenant, a love shared between the Lord and his disciples, which increases and shines on the world if it is constantly renewed at its source, the Sunday Eucharist.

The Lord appeared for the first time on Easter Sunday evening in the upper room, and then returned eight days later to encounter Thomas the Doubter. These appearances confirmed the disciples' faith and prepared them for the Lord's presence in a new form: in the Sacraments and, in a special way, in the Sunday Eucharist. "We celebrate Sunday because of the venerable Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we do so not only at Easter but also at each turning of the week" - so wrote Pope Innocent I at the beginning of the fifth century, testifying to an already well-established practice which had evolved from the early years after the Lord's Resurrection. St. Basil speaks of "holy Sunday, honored by the Lord's Resurrection, the first fruits of all the other days"; and St. Augustine calls Sunday "a sacrament of Easter."

Indeed, Sunday is the day when, more than any other day, Christians are called to remember the salvation offered to them in their baptism, and which made them a new creation in Christ: "When you were buried with Him in baptism, you were also raised with Him through faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead." (Colossians 2:12; see also Romans 6:4-6)

When Christians come together for the Sunday assembly, they are not primarily obeying a precept. Their presence witnesses to their identity as baptized people who belong to the Lord. This belonging translates itself as listening to God's word, participating in the offering, and communion in the Lord's love.

Today it is important to re-evangelize Sunday, for in many places its meaning has been obscured under pressure from an individualistic and materialistic culture. How can we rediscover the meaning of this assembly of disciples around the risen Lord? By remembering our Christian roots, to which many eloquent voices testify.

At the beginning of the fourth century in North Africa, some Christians preferred to die rather than live without Sunday - that is, without the Lord whom they encountered in the Holy Eucharist. At the beginning of the third millennium, these martyrs of Abitene give us pause to reflect and they intercede for us that we might rediscover the richness of the life-giving encounter with the risen Lord Who gives Himself in the Eucharist.

The world awaits this witness of the assembled Church, the sacrament of salvation by which it is secretly nourished.

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Whether through prayer, or through pitching in with any kind of helping hand possible, many of our people have been accompanying those of our diocese and their neighbors affected by the high waters and floods. We pray for God's strength and protection in this time of trial and for favorable weather for the remainder of this year's growing season.