Opening Words of the Eucharistic Pastoral Conference

Your Excellency the Apostolic Nuncio,

Your Excellencies Brother Archbishops and Bishops,

Dear Professors,

Most Reverend Fathers,

Reverend Brothers and Sisters,

Dear Friends,

It is a great joy for me to open the conference for the second time, which year by year prepares the International Eucharistic Congress of Budapest in 2020 both mentally and spiritually.

1. Last year’s theological congress will remain an unforgettable memory for us, the lectures of which have already been published in a book. Even the title of the conference “Binds us, rather than divides us!” – as it says on the title page made its mark in which spirit we are preparing for this great event.. The great lecturers from the Jewish communities, the Eastern Churches and protestant Churches contributed so that we may understand and feel it in its whole historical depth that our Catholic faith adores and celebrates under the name of Eucharist.

2. This year we are going down on this new pathway. First, we are going to hear a deep historical lecture by Professor Robert Somerville on the relationship of the Church and the Eucharist in the 11^th – 12^th century, which is about such an age when the Catholic-Protestant division had not divided Western Christianity. Rector Balázs Martos will analyse the biblical testimony of the Apostle St. Paul about the Last Supper, followed by Professor László Perendy’s examination about the role of the Eucharist in the life of the ancient Church. Tomorrow we will have a lecture about the Eucharist in the light of the ecumenical pursuit by Archbishop Balázs Bábel, and after that we are eager to hear the speech of Koszta Vukovics, director of the Serbian Church Museum. We were specially delighted that he accepted our invitation, since last year the representatives of the Patriarchate of Moscow and of Bucharest spoke about matters of detail, which strengthened and complemented each other, and thus showing the faith and the practice of the Orthodoxy. This year we will get to know a part of the Orthodox community closest to us, who also had a church here in the city of Esztergom back in the day. This part will be about the vessels, in which they kept the Most Holy Communion outside the Divine Liturgy. In this aspect the collection of the Serbian Museum in Szentendre is remarkably rich.

The matter and the question of the guarding of the Eucharist raises a lot of questions also in the Latin Church. This will be the topic of the lecture given by the chancellor, Imre Kelemen. Following this bishops, priests and ecclesiastical members will talk about the other pastoral aspects of the veneration of the Eucharist in the preparation for the first communion in the frame of catechumenate. We will hear about the actuality of the adoration, about the question of communion during open-air masses, where masses of believers participate and about a number of other topics belonging to the subject of pastoral renewal. In this latter area we will learn about the unique experience and practice of different spiritual movements and communities. So, these three days offer immersion on the one hand, and on the other it wants to give an outlook and encouragement to the practical life, to the living of the mission of the Church in today’s world. We will have the opportunity not just to talk about our relationship with the sacramental Jesus, but through the Holy Mass and the adoration we can also experience it.

3. I would like to thank the willingness and the work of the organisers as well as of the lecturers and I truly wish that this conference may really show us the way and give us motivation for the renewal of our Christian lives.