The Catholic world trains its sights on Cebu this week. It is the 51st International Eucharistic Congress—a bundle of devotional and instructional activities centered on the Eucharist. Representatives of different ecclesiastical jurisdictions from all over the world are in Cebu now, as I am with my choir. Pope Francis will not be around himself. It is demanding too much to ask of Pope Francis that he return just one year after his visit last year that sent close to seven million to Manila’s streets in warm welcome. He will be represented by Cardinal Bo, his legate, who comes from Burma. The last International Eucharistic Congress took place in Dublin. It still has to be announced, as far as I know, where the next one will be held. The last time the Philippines hosted the International Eucharistic Congress was in 1937. At that time, my mother, a toddler of five years old, tagged along with my grandparents to Luneta. At that time too, Ricardo Cardinal Vidal, Archbishop emeritus of Cebu, received first holy communion! I am almost sure none of this present generation will be around when next we host the International Eucharistic Congress.
“Eucharist” is a characteristically Catholic term, coming from the Greek word for “thanksgiving” and well established in liturgical usage. For the Catholic, it is not only one among the many liturgical acts with which he is familiar. It is the supreme act of praise and worship. We believe that it is the sacramental actualization in our day and time of Jesus’ eternal act of self-offering to the Father, his filial submission that, because of his humanity, reverses humankind’s history of sin and idolatry and obduracy. It is the eternal “yes” that reverses the “no” that our sinful history has written—and because Jesus’ own “yes” has irreversibly become part of our history, then it is salvific for all of us.
A Eucharistic congress is especially significant in a Jubilee Year of Mercy, because it is the most excellent sacrament of mercy. There is a Latin hymn that has the lyrics: Panis angelicus, fit pants hominumm…..O res mirabilis, manducat Dominum pauper, servus et humilis. Bread of angels made bread of men… A wonderful reality, that the poor, they who serve and the lowly should partake of the Lord. These are sad times of arrant unselfishness: It is selfishness that makes regimes oppressive. It is selfishness that sends refugees fleeing for their lives, many losing them to the elements. It is selfishness that turns asylum-seekers away from borders with barbed wire and sharing hounds. It is selfishness that is the reason that politics is a bad word in this country. And selfishness is sadly the sin for which the Church must itself strike its breast and say Mea Culpa…Mea maxima culpa.
By gathering in an international Eucharistic congress, we are championing what, to the world, might be an impractical, starry-eyed, perhaps even foolish solution to our woes. But Archbishop Soc Villegas preached a beautiful homily at the end of the January plenary session of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines at which the Coro de San Jacinto also sang. He reflected on the Gospel passage about the people and his relatives thinking that Jesus was a fool. If people did not think us fools, that would be a dangerous sign, because that would mean a conformity to the moods of the world, and marching to its beat, betraying the Gospel that has always confronted the world and has been a sign of contradiction. The solution the Eucharist proposes is the selflessness of heart and the generosity of Spirit that allows one to make of one’s life bread for the nourishment of all, not because one is virtuous and holy and strong. Rather, this gift of self is also possible in imitation of him who, bloodied, wounded, defeated and scorned, nevertheless proclaimed that he had overcome the world!
It is the honor of the Coro de San Jacinto to sing for the opening Mass of the International Eucharistic Congress, accompanied by the Christ the King College Youth Orchestra of Calbayog, Samar, directed by a musician-friar, Fr. Marlowe Rosales, OFM. And we owe it to the generosity of our benefactors that a group of 60 choir members from Tuguegarao sing in Cebu for a wondrous, international event.