Pope says Vatican II did not reject Eucharistic adoration or processions

Pope Benedict offered an open-air Mass in the piazza outside his cathedral, the Basilica of St. John Lateran. The Feast of Corpus Christi commemorates the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist and has been celebrated universally since 1264.

The Pope told the large outdoor congregation that the way Eucharistic adoration was de-emphasized in the Church was “influenced by a certain secularizing mentality of the 1960s and ‘70s” and this had “repercussions for the spiritual life of the faithful.”

He proposed that limiting one’s relationship with the “Eucharistic Jesus” solely to the moment of the Mass risked “emptying his presence in the rest of existential time and space,” including in our daily lives.

“In order to truly communicate with another person, I have to know him, I need to know how to remain in silence near him, to listen to him, to look upon him with love,” he said.

“True love and true friendship,” he continued, “lives always in this reciprocity of gazes, of intense eloquent silences, full of respect and of veneration, so that the encounter is lived profoundly, in a personal and not superficial way.”

“In the moment of adoration, we are all on the same level, on bended knee before the Sacrament of Love,” he said.

My Two Cents Worth

I needed Jesus growing up. I even road my bike to church, to be close to Him, several times, when I was a teenager.