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Sin

The Value of Conscience

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The memory still stings: there I was, age 7, the veteran of a splendidly moving and memorable first holy Communion and graced with an oddball love of the Sacrament of…

The memory still stings: there I was, age 7, the veteran of a splendidly moving and memorable first holy Communion and graced with an oddball love of the Sacrament of Confession in all of its velvet-curtained-sliding-screen ambiance, planning to steal a toy “ladies fan” from a candy store, simply to see if I could.

The fan was red, and I had always been — and still am — a sucker for all things red. It was airy, lacy and flamboyant, and I had the 10 cents the thing cost in my pocket.

But the toy display was on the other side of the cashier, and the devil was on my shoulder: “Take it,” he whispered. “I bet you could slip it into your pocket and no one would know.”

Petty theft, which I had never before aspired to, became suddenly a tantalizing challenge. And the fan was red. I took it. I cleverly slipped the thing into my sleeve and casually walked out the door. It was so easy. And so completely unsatisfying.

By the time I’d walked home, fanning myself all the way in a manner I was sure duplicated the graceful lines of a señorita, I had begun to feel a peculiar emptiness that was new, and throughout the day that feeling grew, until it threatened to become a black hole into which I could disappear. By eventide, I had thrown the fan away from me in disgust. It wasn’t mine; it was ill-gotten booty. I had sinned, and it was not good.

The next day was Saturday — confession day in our neighborhood, for in 1965 it was a rare Catholic who would receive Communion without first reconciling themselves to God. I frankly couldn’t wait to get the theft off my chest — and out of my heart and soul — and had barely gotten the “bless me father” off my tongue before the full story came pouring out. The priest, spending another glorious Saturday within a small, airless box and — at that hour — listening mostly to the piping sins of children, had given a grumpy acknowledgement that my sin was a biggie. “Stealing is mentioned in the Ten Commandments; it especially offends God,” he said, and I thought, “I know, I know, it’s been eating at me.”

Thank God for penance. A Rosary decade on my knees felt sufficiently arduous, and I emerged from church feeling like I’d done my piece. And yet . . . it couldn’t be that easy, could it? Where was the justice? The man at the candy store was still out his 10 cents.

Walking home, I fingered the quarter in my pocket, given me by my grandmother and designated for an orange drink I craved. My sense of justice wrestled with my thirst. I did dearly love my orange drink. But, finally, conscience won out; stepping into the candy store, I approached the counter, meaning to confess my crime, pay the dime and be done. But I couldn’t. Serving justice on a coward’s tray, I waited until the man’s attention was diverted, and quietly slid the quarter on his counter and quickly left the store.

It was not a perfectly balanced redemption; it left me cleansed, but out 15 cents. But I had not yet explored the vagaries of fairness. I was ignorant of all but the most elementary theology, and it would be many years before I could distinguish between the unsophisticated notion of “Catholic guilt” and the heavy grace of “a properly formed conscience,” but I felt better. My Catholic grounding had informed my sense of both justice and mercy. I had confessed regret to my God and made a generous, if anonymous, restitution, and the gaping mouth of emptiness so eager to swallow me had been resolutely snapped shut. The red fan was never again a pleasurable toy, but it became a favorite possession, a reminder that whenever God is pushed aside, only emptiness awaits.

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Church Documents

What is An Encyclical?

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An encyclical is a pastoral letter addressed by the pope to the whole Church. Encyclical letters generally address matters of faith or morals, encourage a particular commemoration or pious devotion,…

An encyclical is a pastoral letter addressed by the pope to the whole Church. Encyclical letters generally address matters of faith or morals, encourage a particular commemoration or pious devotion, or deal with matters of Church discipline which are to be universally observed.

The apostles used letters to address the faithful of the various churches they had helped to establish. Most notably, St. Paul wrote a number of letters (epistles), 21 of which are included in the canon of the New Testament. Their successors, the bishops, followed this practice and would often send letters to one another and to the members of the particular churches entrusted to their pastoral care in order to ensure consistency in faith and practice, especially with regard to the celebration of the liturgy. The Bishop of Rome himself would write letters to be circulated to all the bishops. He also received letters from the bishops, which he, in turn, would circulate to other bishops.

During the Middle Ages, the practice of sending these letters fell into disuse. During this time, the popes would send letters only to individual bishops about particular matters within their dioceses. Bishops would respond in writing only to the pope.

Pope Benedict XIV (r. 1740-58), wisely employing the power of the newly invented printing press, revived the ancient practice of the pope writing letters to all the bishops of the world. It was Pope Gregory XVI who applied the term “encyclical” to these letters, from the Latin word encyclicus, or circular, because they were addressed to the entire Church. Since 1740, popes have produced nearly 300 encyclical letters, which have addressed any number of issues pertaining to the life and ministry of the Church.

“He Who Hears You, Hears Me”

Encyclical letters are not considered divinely inspired and do not contain matters considered to be new revelation. However, they are regarded as instruments of the ordinary Magisterium containing the authoritative teaching of the Vicar of Christ.

As regards the question of the binding authority of the teaching contained within an encyclical, Pope Pius XII stated the following in his encyclical letter Humani Generis, dated Aug. 12, 1950: “Nor must it be thought that what is contained in an encyclical letter does not of itself demand assent, on the pretext that the popes do not exercise in them the supreme power of their teaching authority. Rather, such teachings belong to the ordinary magisterium, of which it is true to say: ‘He who hears you, hears me’ (Lk 10:16); for the most part, too, what is expounded and indicated in encyclical letters already appertains to Catholic doctrine for other reasons.”

The Second Vatican Council declared: “Religious submission of will and of mind must be shown in a special way to the authentic teaching of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra. That is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known chiefly either from the character of the documents, his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking” (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, No. 25).

Papal encyclical letters at times have been received by the Church with joy as they have addressed matters of popular piety or devotion. At other times, the popes have written encyclicals addressing matters pertaining to the great moral issues of their time. Such letters have often been the source of much debate among various scholars and theologians.

Encyclicals are not in and of themselves considered to be infallible pronouncements of the pontiff. And while the teachings contained therein may sometimes prove burdensome and difficult for some to accept and to follow, Catholics of good will everywhere are obliged to acknowledge their apostolic authority and strive to humbly assent to their teaching. How blessed the Church has been to receive the teaching of the Lord and the guidance of the Holy Spirit that is contained in the encyclical letters of the popes down through the ages!

Father Joseph L. Parisi received his Master of Pastoral Theology Degree from the University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome in 1974 and the Licentiate in Canon Law from the University of St. Paul in Ottawa, Canada, in 1986. 

The Example of Humanae Vitae

Few encyclical letters have been the source of as much controversy or dissent as Humanae Vitae, written by Pope Paul VI, who sought to crystallize the doctrinal teaching enunciated by the council fathers of the Second Vatican Council regarding marriage and family.

On Dec. 7, 1965, Pope Paul VI and the fathers of Vatican II published the Pastoral Constitution on the Church, entitled Gaudium et Spes. The third chapter of that conciliar document speaks at length of the sacred character and dignity of marriage and the family which is its fruit. The same council fathers took the opportunity to restate with great clarity that marriage and conjugal love are intimately ordered by the Creator and by nature itself to the procreation and education of children. They declared that Christian spouses are to bind themselves to the Church’s teaching. They further stated that Christian couples are to be governed by a conscience formed in full conformity with the divine law and the consistent magisterial teachings of the Church, which has been given the charism to interpret authentically the law in light of the Gospel.

It is important to place the pronouncements of Gaudium et Spes within the historical context of its time. Oral contraceptives first appeared in medical practice in 1960. Very soon thereafter, several noteworthy theological voices expressed a desire for the Church to reconsider its position regarding the regulation of birth by artificial means. In 1963, Pope John XXIII established what became a commission of six European scholars (non-theologians) to undertake a sociological study of birth control and population growth. This commission met once in 1963 and twice in 1964. As Vatican II was concluding, Pope Paul expanded this commission, enlarging it to 58 members. Among them were married couples, laywomen, theologians and bishops.

Following the close of Vatican II, a final meeting of the commission, which Pope Paul VI had enlarged to include 16 bishops as an executive committee, took place in 1966. The commission was only consultative, but its controversial final report to Pope Paul was approved by a majority of the membership. In that report, the commission proposed that the pope might use his supreme authority to approve at least some form of artificial contraception for married couples to assist them in their decisions to responsibly limit the size of their families. A minority of members dissented and issued a parallel report to the Pope. After more than two years of study and consultation, Pope Paul issued Humanae Vitae on July 25, 1968.

The pontiff exercised his duty and function as Successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ and issued the encyclical declaring that marriage and the conjugal life are ordered intrinsically to both the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children. In Humanae Vitae, he removed any doubt that any of the forms of artificial contraceptive, oral hormonal anti-ovulants among them, are not in harmony with the authentic magisterial teaching of the Church and that the Christian faithful were to take care to avoid any act in conflict with that teaching.

In promulgating his encyclical, it is evident that the Pope did not see himself speaking as a private theologian like other theologians, but in virtue of the mandate entrusted to him by Christ himself as His Vicar. Clearly, Pope Paul did not utter his teaching ex cathedra and seek to place upon the instruction the seal of papal infallibility. And yet, in the authentic exercise of his supreme apostolic authority, he proposed anew the consistent truth of God’s unitive plan for marital love and the procreation of life and family.

Humanae Vitae was greeted with much dissent and disagreement. It remains among the most controversial of all papal encyclicals. And yet the authentic teaching of Pope Paul has been affirmed and restated by his successors and has been enshrined in canons of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (see Nos. 2366-2372), and there are many theologians who see the teachings of Pope Paul as remarkably prophetic in their warnings of the impact to society that might result from a contraceptive mentality.

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Mary

Don’t Catholics Worship Mary?

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There is something about Mary that drives many fundamentalists and some evangelicals nuts. Of course, they will insist Mary doesn’t bother them, but they claim the “fact” that Catholics exalt…

There is something about Mary that drives many fundamentalists and some evangelicals nuts.

Of course, they will insist Mary doesn’t bother them, but they claim the “fact” that Catholics exalt her so much she is apparently worshipped, or even — as you can read in the most extreme anti-Catholic literature — promoted to the fourth person of the Trinity. When I was a fundamentalist, I knew that Catholics worshipped Mary. Why else did they have statues of her, pray the Rosary to her and call her the “Mother of God”? Didn’t they know that God has no mother? How ridiculous!

It is hard to overstate the reactionary stance of fundamentalists toward any positive teaching about Mary. For example, in my years attending a small fundamentalist “Bible chapel” as a boy, I recall at least three sermons praising Rahab the harlot (see Jos 2 and 6:17-25), but just one about Mary, the mother of Jesus. And in that sermon, Mary was described as a “good mother” (true, of course) who was no different than anyone else.

A close relative once described the Blessed Mother as “a biological vessel” used by God — the sort of remark that would be rightly considered insulting if directed to any other mother. And a close friend from my Bible college days asked me, upon learning that I was becoming Catholic (in 1997), “But what are you going to do about having to worship Mary?”

What exists, then, is a double-pronged problem: Fundamentalists hold to a very lacking, even insulting, view of Mary because they have a deeply distorted understanding of what the Catholic Church teaches and believes about Mary. Their doctrine is almost completely negative in character, shaped in reactionary fear rather than in receptive faith.

If that sounds unduly harsh, consider that fundamentalists are loathe to admit that Mary is indeed the Mother of God. This is an essential point in addressing the accusation that Catholics “worship” Mary. Simply put, if a person refuses to admit the truth about Mary being Theotokos (“God bearer,” or Mother of God), he will not understand authentic Catholic devotion to Mary. James McCarthy, a former Catholic who operates a ministry meant to “save” Catholics, writes in “The Gospel According to Rome” (Harvest House, 1995) that “the Bible . . . never calls Mary the Mother of God for a very simple reason: God has no mother. As someone has rightly said, just as Christ’s human nature had no father, so His divine nature had no mother. This Bible, therefore, rightly calls Mary the ‘mother of Jesus’ (John 2:1; Acts 1:14) but never the Mother of God.” Like Nestorius (d. 451), who made the same basic error in the fifth century, McCarthy overlooks that mothers do not give birth to natures, but to persons. Jesus Christ has two natures, but he is one Person. While Jesus’ human nature comes from Mary and His divine nature from the Father (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 503), he is not partially divine and partially human, as McCarthy’s statement implies.

Fundamentalists claim they believe that Jesus is one person, true God and true man. But they fail to reach logical conclusions fixed upon that foundational fact. Prior to the Incarnation, God not only didn’t have a mother, He also never wore clothing, ate food, took naps or went fishing! But the Incarnation, the central event in salvation history, radically changed the relationship between God and man precisely because God became man — and He did so by being born of the Virgin Mary. Every devotion shown to Mary by Catholics (and the Eastern Orthodox) is based in the belief she is the Mother of God. But this devotion is not worship; that is for God alone. Besides, if Jesus loves His mother — and we know He does — shouldn’t we also express the same sort of familial love?

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com).

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Sacramentals

How To Dispose of Blessed Items?

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I know of no graveyards for broken holy items. But a blessed crucifix or a blessed statue is not just an ordinary item: it is blessed. And blessed objects should…

I know of no graveyards for broken holy items. But a blessed crucifix or a blessed statue is not just an ordinary item: it is blessed. And blessed objects should be treated with reverence.

If you cannot fix the item, or you have no use for it, you may discard the item by incineration, burial or pious disposal.

There are no hard-and-fast rules for “pious disposal,” but common sense should help you figure it out. What you want to avoid is someone combing through the garbage only to discover a statue of the Blessed Mother in the dumpster. That’s no way to treat a lady, and certainly no way to treat Our Lady.

Rev. Francis Hoffman, J.C.D., Executive Director of Relevant Radio. Follow him on his Facebook page “Father Rocky.”

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Environment

Eucharist and Ecology

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“Everything is connected,” Pope Francis tells us in his 2015 encyclical letter on ecology, Laudato Si’ (see No. 91). In particular, as Pope Benedict XVI had said in 2007, caring…

“Everything is connected,” Pope Francis tells us in his 2015 encyclical letter on ecology, Laudato Si’ (see No. 91).

In particular, as Pope Benedict XVI had said in 2007, caring for the earth and caring for one another go together. He called them the “ecology of nature” and “human ecology,” and made a further connection, too: “There is an inseparable link between peace with creation and peace among men. Both of these presuppose peace with God” (Message for the World Day of Peace 2007, No. 8).

We’re becoming more and more aware that something has gone wrong in our relationship with creation — that is what we mean when we talk of an ecological or environmental crisis. And we’ve known for a long time that something has gone wrong in our human relations with one another — that is why there are so many conflicts in society and in the world at large. As Christians, we believe that something went wrong in humanity’s relationship with God at a very early stage — that’s what we call original sin. All of those problems are connected.

The Bible shows us the link very clearly. After the sin in the Garden of Eden, dramatized as Adam and Eve eating the fruit that God forbade them to eat, they hide from God and make clothes to cover their embarrassment with each other at being naked. Then God says to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you!” (Gn 3:17). It seems that the relationship of Adam and Eve with God, with one another and with the earth have all been broken simultaneously. Why? Because it’s God’s love that holds everything together, and when Adam and Eve defy God and reject His love, everything falls apart around them.

Spiritual Answers

That means that the ecological problem needs a deep spiritual answer, not just a bit of conservation and recycling to solve it. We must renew our love for God if our broken relationships with one another and with creation are to be repaired.

Pope Francis tells us how we need to see things: “We human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth” (Laudato Si’, No. 92). Those words remind us of the famous “Canticle of Creation” composed by St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis’ patron. St. Francis thanks God for all the wonders of creation, and the opening words of the canticle are Laudato Si’, “Praise be to you, my Lord.”

It is sometimes said that Christians bear some responsibility for the damage to creation because, as recounted in the Book of Genesis, God says to Adam and Eve, “Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth” (Gn 1:28). Over the years, some may have regarded these words as a license to exploit creation, but when seen in context that cannot be their true meaning. The verse immediately before that says that God created Adam and Eve in His own image. The dominion that is given to them must be intended as an image of God’s dominion. They are intended to be God’s own representatives in the midst of the creation that He made and loves and delights in. If God found everything He made “very good,” it cannot be that He gave human beings permission to spoil it! Instead, our proper task is to look after it, care for it and nurture it on his behalf.

Having rejected God, we human beings have a sinful tendency to think that everything exists just for our own benefit, so we use creation greedily and selfishly, and St. Paul said that creation groans as a result. Creation waits, he said, “with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God” (Rom 8:19). True children of God will treat creation properly, but sinful children harm it.

Now, there is no truer child of God than Jesus, God’s own Son who came to save us from sin and to save the whole world from the effects of sin. St. Paul recognized Jesus as a second Adam, sent to remedy the faults of the first Adam (see 1 Cor 15:21-22,45-49), and the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World said that Jesus not only reveals God to us, but also reveals us to ourselves (see Gaudium et Spes, No. 22). Being true man as well as true God, He shows us how human life is meant to be lived. We are all made in the image of God, but He is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). In every way, we need to learn from Him and ask His help.

Jesus had a remarkable relationship with creation: He calmed the storm (see Mt 8:23-27), multiplied the loaves and the fish to feed the five thousand (Mt 14:13-21), opened the eyes of the blind (Jn 9:1-7), helped the crippled man to walk (Mt 9:2-8) and performed countless other miracles. It seems that creation was responsive to Him, at peace with Him, its brokenness was mended, and it even became abundant in His hands, the hands of the second Adam, the true child of God, the true image of God.

At the Last Supper Jesus took bread and wine into His hands, and all of the accounts tell us that He gave thanks to God for them. Unlike human beings, who take things without any thankfulness to God, He was full of thanks and praise, and the bread and wine were transformed by His act of thankfulness. They became His own body and blood. Instead of groaning, they rejoiced. They were fulfilled in His hands. Pope Francis says that in the Eucharist “all that has been created finds its greatest exaltation.… Joined to the incarnate Son, present in the Eucharist, the whole cosmos gives thanks to God. Indeed the Eucharist is itself an act of cosmic love” (Laudato Si’,No. 236).

Jesus said to His disciples, “Do this in memory of me.” Do we ever think that among the many lessons He was teaching us at that moment one of them was how to treat creation? Handle it with love and thanksgiving, not with violence and greed!

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In every Mass, Jesus is among us. The priest represents Him offering up His one sacrifice as our true priest. Jesus offers himself and the whole of creation to God with joy and thanksgiving, and we join in His offering. We offer ourselves and all of our work in the world to God “through Him and with Him and in Him.”

That’s the significance of the procession with the bread and the wine to the altar. We identify them as “fruit of the earth (fruit of the vine), and work of human hands.” We’re bringing samples and symbols of all of our work on God’s earth, and the priest prays in our name: “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread (wine) we offer you.” These words show the full dimensions of what is happening, which we so easily forget. The Mass is not just about Jesus and me as an individual, nor even about Jesus and us as a community; it’s about humanity and the whole of creation being taken up to God in and through the loving sacrifice of Christ. It’s “an act of cosmic love”!

Jesus unites us once again with God and with one another and with all that God has made. All that was broken and scattered is gathered and reconnected in Him. So, Jesus himself is the answer to the ecological crisis. St. Paul tells us that God’s plan is to unite “all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth” (Eph 1:10), and that everything is reconciled with God through the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross (see Col 1:20). That one sacrifice is present in every Mass, a sacrifice of thanksgiving — that’s why we also use the word “Eucharist,” which means “thanksgiving” — and powerful ripples of thanksgiving should spread outward from the Mass into our lives and through us into the world itself.

Thankfulness

The prayers of the Mass teach us to be thankful: “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, through Christ Our Lord.” Giving thanks to God “always and everywhere” through Jesus Christ is the path to salvation! And to help us do that Jesus gives himself to us in every Mass. We actually receive Jesus and His own thanksgiving into our hearts and souls in holy Communion, and we then need to put thanksgiving into practice day by day. Grace before and after meals is a particular echo of the Mass, and what could be more appropriate than a morning offering giving thanks for each new day and asking God to help us to use it well, and special prayers when we embark on a new venture, involving the use of resources God has generously given us?

“In all circumstances give thanks” (1 Thes 5:18), St. Paul tells us, because nothing at all can “separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:39). At all times, good and bad, thankfulness comes from being aware that we are never alone, and that Jesus is with us. Offering everything up to God, especially trials and sufferings, is another precious way to live every moment in the very spirit of the Mass. Consciously bringing our lives and our plans, our work and our worries to Mass, and placing them on the altar together with the gifts of bread and wine is the way to unite our whole lives to the liturgy and the world itself to the sacrifice of Christ.

Sometimes it’s the most obvious things that we fail to see. In this case, the Church is asking us to reflect on the fact that our most sacred act, the Mass, is conducted with bread and wine. By bringing those gifts to the altar to be offered to God, we’re acknowledging that all of creation has been given to us by God; we are saying thank you; we are acknowledging that we’re not masters of the earth, it’s God’s earth and we’re his servants; and we are asking Jesus to feed us and teach us how to live as true and faithful children of God.

We will never fully understand the riches of the Mass. We keep learning and making new discoveries. The ecological crisis prompts us to see links between the Mass and all that God has made. Deep down, the ecological crisis is a spiritual crisis, and the Mass is the key to our response as Catholics. As Pope Francis says, the Eucharist is “a source of light and motivation for our concerns for the environment, directing us to be stewards of all creation” (Laudato Si’, No. 236).

Msgr. Paul McPartlan is a priest of the Archdiocese of Westminster (UK) and the Carl J. Peter Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenism at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

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Sacraments

Eucharistic Processions

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Processions have long been a form of liturgical prayer. Processions to and within sacred sites, especially the Temple in Jerusalem, marked numerous festivals in Jewish prayer, and many of the…

Processions have long been a form of liturgical prayer. Processions to and within sacred sites, especially the Temple in Jerusalem, marked numerous festivals in Jewish prayer, and many of the psalms were composed to accompany such processions. As an example, the Talmud describes processions on the seven days of the feast of Tabernacles, during which the people would process around the altar with willow branches, singing a litany that included Psalm 118:25 as the refrain.

St. Basil (d. A.D. 379) in the East and St. Ambrose (d. 397) in the West provide some of the earliest references to liturgical processions in the Catholic Church. Both state that these processions had been practiced for many years, accompanied with sung litanies.

Public processions with the Blessed Sacrament became popular only when Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist was questioned. For many centuries this sacramental reality was taken for granted, but in the 11th century an archdeacon named Berengar of Tours — who taught in the cathedral school of Chartres, France — was said to question the Eucharist’s real presence (though historians disagree on whether he actually denied the Real Presence, it is accepted that Berengar questioned transubstantiation as a description of the change that occurs when the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ). Overt denial of the Real Presence in the Eucharistic species came with the Protestant Reformers.

In response to Protestant notions that the Eucharist was merely a symbol, the Church affirmed clearly the ancient understanding of the Real Presence — and processions through the streets of cities and villages became popular as a means of openly demonstrating support and reverence for this reality. The Council of Trent taught, in 1551, that the Most Blessed Sacrament “is to be honored with extraordinary festive celebrations (and) solemnly carried from place to place in processions according to the praiseworthy universal rite and custom of the holy Church.”

Theologically, processions remind us that we are pilgrims journeying through this earthly existence following Jesus on “the Way” (an early title for the Church). In the Eucharistic processions of Holy Thursday and the solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi) we publicly proclaim this truth, following the Lord physically even as we pledge anew to do so spiritually. We also give public witness to our acceptance of the Lord’s words: “The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (Jn 6:51). As such, public processions serve as tools of evangelization within our neighborhoods.

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