The Eucharist and Justice: Pedro Arrupe and Pope Francis
Eucharist can offer. This hope for the transformative and healing power of
Christ in the Eucharist recalls the image of the young boy standing before
the host on the streets of Lourdes. The broken flesh of those in pain comes
from the wounds of Jesus and is never forgotten in the Eucharist.
Pope Francis also draws upon the suffering of the world in his articulation
of the value of the Eucharist today. In a beautiful homily given during
the Mass of Corpus Christi on May 30, 2013, he calls people to realize
communion is part of the Eucharist. As Arrupe looked out over the
suffering and broken bodies of the Japanese, he prayed for both those
who had dropped the atomic bomb and those who suffered as a result
of the decision, making no distinction between the two groups.
Arrupe and Francis share an awareness of the consoling and transformative
power of the Eucharist and the graces that come from Christ’s presence.
The pope also sees the Eucharist as a unifying experience, saying, “It is
… in nourishing ourselves with his body and blood that he moves us on
from a multitude to being a community . . . the Eucharist is the sacrament
of communion that brings us out of individualism.”12 Pope Francis echoed
these sentiments in another teaching on the Eucharist in February of this
year as he stated on Vatican Radio, “The Eucharist affects the way we see
others and brings us together with young and old, poor and affluent,
neighbors and visitors.”13 Both Arrupe and Pope Francis understand the
Eucharist to call people to come together in solidarity to work for justice,
rather than to divide people through animosity.
In many of his homilies, Pope Francis speaks of how indifference toward
suffering needs to be addressed. At