CV NEWS FEED // In his opening remarks at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2024 Plenary Assembly, the apostolic nuncio to the US, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, urged the bishops to unite their wounds and the wounds of the Church to the Eucharist and the wounds in the body of the resurrected Christ for healing.
“We are painfully aware of the most glaring wounds in today’s church,” Cardinal Pierre said. “The scandal of abuse and of failed oversight, the plague of indifference toward the poor and suffering, which can affect us all. Skepticism toward God and religion in a secularized culture and an agitating temptation towards temptation and division even among those of us who are committed to Christ and his church.”
Cardinal Pierre continued:
These wounds and sufferings are not abstract ideas to us. The bishop, because he is at the same time a disciple of Jesus, a brother to his fellow bishops, and the shepherd of his flock, feels these wounds firsthand. How can a shepherd who himself is hurting, adequately lead and guide his suffering sheep?
Cardinal Pierre pointed to the Apostles as examples, saying the first encounter between the resurrected Christ and his Apostles teaches a powerful lesson that demonstrates that wounds can be a sign of victory. Even as Jesus appeared to the Twelve to show his own wounds from the Passion still present in his resurrected body, the Apostles, too, had their own human wounds.
Cardinal Pierre said that the Apostles had to learn how their wounds could be transformed through an encounter with the risen Christ.
“By showing them his hands and his feet and his side, Jesus was showing them what wounds looked like in a risen body,” Cardinal Pierre said, continuing:
By means of this experience, the Lord invited them into a mystery that would have life-changing implications for them—because while the Gospel account does not say it explicitly, the unspoken reality is that the apostles were also carrying the trauma of wounds when they encountered the risen Lord. They had abandoned him out of fear, one of their own had committed suicide, they were still grieving the death of the one in whom they had believed and they were grieving the hope that they thought had died with him.
According to Cardinal Pierre, the encounter between the Apostles’ wounds and Christ’s became “the place of experience” that consoled them and gave discernment, bringing them further into the Body of Christ.
“By showing the apostles his hands, feet and side, the Lord is saying to them and to us, ‘I chose to make you, your sin and failure, a part of the story of my victory. If the marks of my crucifixion can exist on my resurrected body, then the marks of your own suffering and failures can exist in the body of my resurrected church,’” Cardinal Pierre said.
Cardinal Pierre then emphasized the need for the Eucharist, saying that it is now the place of encounter to share in his Passion and wounds, yet also find healing. Quoting Pope Francis’ homily in 2020 for the Feast of Corpus Christi, Cardinal Pierre reminded bishops that:
The celebration of holy mass is the memorial that heals memory, the memory of a heart. The mass is the treasure that should be foremost both in the church and in our lives. And let us also rediscover eucharistic adoration, which continues the work of the mass within us. This will do much good to us, for it heals us within, especially now, when our need is so great.
He also quoted Pope Francis’ 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, saying “The Eucharist … is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”
“We are not perfect, we are weak and by letting Christ have communion with us in our shared weakness our shared woundedness we also share in his saving strength,” Cardinal Pierre concluded.
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