It was a life-changing experience

Your Eminencies, Your Excellencies,

Your Excellency, the President of Hungary,

our distinguished guests,

It is a great joy for me to greet the participants of the preparatory plenary meeting of the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress on behalf of the Hungarian Catholic Bishops’ Conference. I can say with certainty that all Hungarian Catholic believers await this event with great joy and hope. It is a special pleasure for us that our country can host this Catholic event for the second time. My age group knew many people, who were participants of the first Eucharistic Congress in Hungary back in 1938. For them it was a life-changing experience, but we also received great strength from their stories during the time of the Church-persecuting dictatorship.

We look towards this event with great expectations and zealous preparation. As a bishop and a pastor I see a great opportunity for our parishes to renew and gather strength in the Eucharistic spirituality during the preparation. Secularization is a great problem these days in our country. The Congress can be a great opportunity to moderate it. Discovering Christ living among us in the Eucharist can give a new hope to our communities to grow in faith. Not so long ago I read in a book: We find as much of Christ in the Eucharist, as much we believe in him; and we recognise him as much as we can love him. That means that our love towards Christ helps us to know him better than before and recognise him in “breaking the bread”.

There are people who do not see the point in going to the mass every Sunday. We would like to lead them to Jesus, and help them to know who invites them into his community. There are also people, who were violently kept away from the church by the atheist dictatorship. A part of them are zealous members of our church communities, but others live their days without God. Thank God, there are people – not in a great number – who regularly participate in our eucharistic celebrations. We would like to strengthen their fidelity towards the altar, because we are aware that the Church is born and is growing around the altar.

One of our non-secret hopes is that the Holy Father, Pope Francis will honour us with the gift of his presence at this event. Since the fall of the communist dictatorship we welcomed St. John Paul II in Hungary twice. This international event might bring us the joy to welcome the successor of St. Peter in our country again. His presence would raise the significance of the Congress and the joy of those who participate at this meeting. His visit would attract the attention of the media, and so we could deliver the message to even more people: Immanuel, God is with us!

The many forms of mass-media can also be of great help. We cordially invite the members of the press. Through them we would like to show the world the Christ among us, along with the saints, religious, folk and cultural values of the Catholic Church of Hungary. They say that every plant tells something about its environment: about the climate, the sunshine, the water and the earth it grew from. In the same way, we, people also confess through our lives about the environment we live in, where we belong and about that interior relationship that connects us to God. That is why we would like to bear witness to the spiritual background and environment formed by the Hungarian saints, and which has defined our Hungarian Christian lives for a thousand years.

During the preparatory time we do our best, so that every parish could benefit from the spiritual fruits of the Congress, so that they play defining a role in the Hungarian Catholic renewal after the Congress.

Preparing and arranging the Congress needs a lot of work. It is good to hear, how many people want to participate actively in organising and settling the programs. In these days many are tempted by selfishness, withdrawal and turning inwards. Not only the believers, but we priests are also threatened by this. It is our hope that the eucharistic Christ will open our hearts towards each other and we will celebrate God’s love for us with real joy during the International Eucharistic Congress!

May the eucharistic Jesus open our eyes and hearts, so that this meeting may abundantly pour the richness of its graces, the joy and the peace of faith onto our country and the whole world!

I welcome you all and wish you a good work!

Photo: Marcsi Ambrus

IEC Secretariat