National Catholic Register on "The Church’s Top Priority"

From the editors of National Catholic Register (April 1-7 edition):

Two Popes and the major bodies of the Vatican have unmistakably set the church’s top priority for the Church in our time. It’s the Eucharist.

That includes the proper preparation for Mass (especially confession), the proper celebration of Mass (including the translations for Mass) and the proper attitude toward the Eucharist outside of Mass (including adoration and the placement of our tabernacles).

Each year since the Jubilee Year 2000 (which Pope John Paul II called “profoundly Eucharistic”) has seen a major document come from the Vatican on the Eucharist. In fact, the Eucharistic documents have been the only significant ones of the new millennium.

• 2001 Pope John Paul II’s Novo Millennio Ineunte (At the Beginning of the New Millennium) called promoting Sunday Mass the Church’s top priority. Liturgiam Authenticam (Authentic Liturgy) by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments sought to correct “errors and omissions” in the Mass.

• 2002 Bishops around the world promulgated the new General Instruction of the Roman Missal.

• 2003 Pope John Paul II gave the Church his final encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, which is best translated On the Eucharist and Its Relationship to the Church.

• 2004 Pope John Paul II kicked off a Year of the Eucharist with the apostolic letter Mane Nobiscum Domine (Stay With Us Lord). The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments’ Redemptionis Sacramentum (The Sacrament of Redemption) was subtitled “On certain matters to be observed or to be avoided regarding the Most Holy Eucharist.”

• 2005 The General Assembly of the Bishops kicked off the Synod on the Eucharist with an Instrumentum Laboris on the Eucharist. Pope Benedict canonized five new saints known for promoting the Eucharist.

• 2006 Pope Benedict spent the year completing the work of the Synod. Meanwhile, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sent a directive liturgical translation officials regarding the consecration prayer of Mass. U.S. bishops received a letter from liturgy point-man Cardinal Francis Arinze on the translation of the missal.

• 2007 The most significant of all this teaching regarding the Eucharist: Sacramentum Caritatis (The Sacrament of Charity), Pope Benedict’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation.

Why such an emphasis on the Eucharist?

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