Articles

Pontiff's Homily to First Communicants and Others
"Drink Directly From the Source of Life"

MUNICH, Germany, SEPT. 11, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the
homily Benedict XVI delivered on Sunday evening in the cathedral in Munich,
during the celebration of Vespers attended by first communicants, young
families, and pastoral and liturgical collaborators of the Church.

* * *

Dear First Communicants!
Dear Parents and Teachers!

The reading we have just heard is from the final book of the New Testament,
the Book of Revelation. The seer is helped to lift his eyes upward, toward
heaven, and forward, toward the future. But in doing so, he speaks to us
about earth, about the present, about our lives.

In the course of our lives, all of us are on a journey, we are traveling
toward the future. Naturally, we want to find the right road: to find true
life, and not a dead end or a desert. We don't want to end up saying: I took
the wrong road, my life is a failure, it went wrong. We want to find joy in
life; we want, in the words of Jesus, "to have life in abundance."

But let us listen to the seer of the Book of Revelation. What is he saying?
He is talking about a reconciled world. A world in which people "of every
nation, race, people and tongue" (7:9) have come together in joy. How can
this happen? What road do we take to get there?

First and most important: these people are living with God; God himself has
"sheltered them in his tent" (cf. 7:15), as the reading says. What do we
mean by "God's tent"? Where is it found? How do we get there?

The seer might be alluding to the first chapter of the Gospel according to
John, where we read: "The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us"
(1:14). God is not far from us, he is not somewhere out in the universe,
somewhere that none of us can go. He has pitched his tent among us: In Jesus
he became one of us, flesh and blood just like us. This is his "tent."

And in the Ascension, he did not go somewhere far away from us. His tent, he
himself in his Body, remains among us and is one of us. We can call him by
name and speak at ease with him. He listens to us and, if we are attentive,
we can also hear him speaking back.

Let me repeat: In Jesus, it is God who "camps" in our midst. But let me also
repeat: Where does this happen? Our reading gives us two answers to this
question. It says that the men and women at peace "have washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (7:14).

To us this sounds very strange. In his cryptic language, the seer is
speaking about baptism. His words about "the blood of the Lamb" allude to
Jesus' love, which he continued to show even up to his violent death.

This love, both divine and human, is the bath into which he plunges us at
baptism -- the bath with which he washes us, cleansing us so that we can be
fit for God and capable of living in his company. The act of baptism,
however, is just a beginning. By walking with Jesus, in faith and in our
life in union with him, his love touches us, purifies us and enlightens us.

For the ancient world, white was the color of light. The white robes mean
that in faith we become light, we set aside darkness, falsehood and every
sort of evil, and we become people of light, fit for God.

The baptismal gown, like your first-Communion robes, is meant to remind us
of this, and to tell us: by living as one with Jesus and the community of
believers, the Church, you have become a person of light, a person of truth
and goodness -- a person radiant with goodness, the goodness of God himself.

The second answer to the question: "Where do we find Jesus?" is also given
by the seer in cryptic language. He tells us that the Lamb leads the great
multitude of people from every culture and nation to the sources of living
water.

Without water, there is no life. People who lived near the desert knew this
well, and so springs of water became for them the symbol par excellence of
life. The Lamb, Jesus, leads men and women to the sources of life. Among
these sources of life are the sacred Scriptures, in which God speaks to us
and teaches us the right way to live.

The true source is Jesus himself, in whom God gives us his very self. He
does this above all in holy Communion. There we can, as it were, drink
directly from the source of life: He comes to us and makes each of us one
with him. We can see how true this is: Through the Eucharist, the sacrament
of communion, a community is formed which spills over all borders and
embraces all languages -- the universal Church, in which God speaks to us
and lives among us. This is how we should receive holy Communion: seeing it
as an encounter with Jesus, an encounter with God himself, who leads us to
the sources of true life.

Dear parents! I ask you to help your children to grow in faith, I ask you to
accompany them on their journey toward holy Communion, on their journey
toward Jesus and with Jesus. Please, go with your children to Church and
take part in the Sunday Eucharistic celebration! You will see that this is
not time lost; rather, it is the very thing that can keep your family truly
united and centered.

Sunday becomes more beautiful, the whole week becomes more beautiful, when
you go to Sunday Mass together. And please, pray together at home too: at
meals and before going to bed. Prayer does not only bring us nearer to God
but also nearer to one another. It is a powerful source of peace and joy.
Family life becomes more joyful and expansive whenever God is there and his
closeness is experienced in prayer.

Dear catechists and teachers! I urge you to keep alive in the schools the
search for God, for that God who in Jesus Christ has made himself visible to
us. I know that in our pluralistic world it is no easy thing in schools to
bring up the subject of faith.

But it is hardly enough for our children and young people to learn technical
knowledge and skills alone, and not the criteria that give knowledge and
skill their direction and meaning. Encourage your students not only to raise
questions about particular things, but also to ask about the why and the
wherefore of life as a whole. Help them to realize that any answers that do
not finally lead to God are insufficient.

Dear priests and all who assist in parishes! I urge you to do everything
possible to make the parish a "spiritual community" for people -- a great
family where we also experience the even greater family of the universal
Church, and learn through the liturgy, catechesis and all the events of
parish life to walk together on the way of true life.

These three places of education -- the family, the school and the parish --
go together, and they help us to find the way that leads to the sources of
life, toward "life in abundance." Amen!

[Translation issued by the Holy See; adapted]

© Copyright 2006 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana

ZE06091103

Reprinted with permission from ZENIT.