” “"Partaking of the Eucharist results in belonging to Christ". It "gives direction, one single purpose to the life of the believer: to follow Jesus". Mgr. Luciano Monari, bishop of Piacenza-Bobbio, urged the young in this morning’s catechesis in Cologne to "become a gift as Jesus did". "In the Last Supper, instead of telling the past, Jesus announced the future: the passion, the death, His life for you. If Jesus’s life had been slave to selfishness added Monari to the need of making a name for Himself, the words of the Supper would be empty. But Jesus’s life was really an act of love, a total gift. And Jesus’s gift begs for a response from us, which turns into a deep relationship". The Eucharist "contains in itself all of God’s work for mankind: the reconciliation, redemption, salvation, the gift of the Spirit, the new life".
In his reflections in front of another group of young Italian pilgrims, mgr. Vincenzo Paglia, bishop of Terni, talked instead of the "icon" of the Three Wise Men, whose remains are hosted in the Cathedral of the Rhine city: "The Three Wise Men, just like the shepherds who go to the grotto in Bethlehem, suggest to the man of our times that, in order to find Jesus, we have to stop looking at ourselves, not to remain prisoners to our narrow horizons, to our predictable habits, to laziness. Cologne in the WYD days is ended Paglia for you young people what Bethlehem was for the Three Wise Men: but we need to have the same adoring attitude as theirs in front of Jesus".
