St. Peter's Square at the Vatican welcomed the faithful who, despite the sun and the heat of the Italian capital today, wanted to accompany Pope Francis in praying the Angelus on this 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
In his address, the Pope focused on the two attitudes that Catholics should have before the Eucharist: amazement and gratitude. "First: amazement, because the words of Jesus surprise us. Even today. He always surprises us," stressed the pontiff, who continued: "Those who do not grasp the style of Jesus remain suspicious: it seems impossible, even inhuman, to eat the flesh of a man and drink his blood. The flesh and blood, instead, are the humanity of the Savior, his own life offered as food for ours".
The Pope pointed out the second attitude, "gratitude, first astonishment, now gratitude because we recognize Jesus there where he is present for us and with us. He becomes bread for us. This food, the pontiff stressed, "is more than necessary for us, because it satisfies the hunger for hope, the hunger for truth, the hunger for salvation that we all feel, not in our stomachs, but in our hearts. We all need the Eucharist. Jesus takes care of the greatest need: he saves us, nourishing our life with his own, forever".
Finally, the Pope asked himself, "Do I hunger and thirst for salvation, not only for myself, but for all my brothers and sisters?"
After the Marian prayer, Francis again called for peace in the world and recalled the beatification in the Democratic Republic of Congo of Albert Joubert, of the Diocese of Uvira, and three young Italian Xaverian missionaries: Fathers Giovanni Didonè and Luigi Carrara and Brother Vittorio Faccin, killed in Baraka and Fizi on 28 November 1964. "Their martyrdom," said the Pope, "was the crowning of a life spent for the Lord and for their brothers" and he asked that the example of these martyrs may open the way to peace in that land as well as in the Middle East, Israel, Palestine, the martyred Ukraine and Myanmar.
