June 2... Celebration of CORPUS CHRISTI...contd

...Our cities, as we all know, have become places of solitude of a kind never known before. And nowhere are people so lonely andabandoned as perhaps in apartment complexes, where theyare packed together most closely. A friend told me how once, when he had moved into a big city in the north, he was on his way out of the apartment complex, and he greeted someone else who lived in that complex, but the person just stared at him in amazement and said, "You've mistaken me forsomeone else!" Where people are just masses, a greeting turns into a mistake. But the Lord brings us together and opens us up, so thatwe can accept one another, belong to one another, so that in standing before him we can learn again to stand next to each other. Thus, the Marienplatz itself comes into its own true role. How often we hurry past each other here. Today this is the setting for our being together, which, as a duty and a gift, will continue. There areof course many big gatherings, yet so often it is what we are against that unites us, more than what we are for. And it is almost always the case that we are brought together by something we want, and this interest is directed against other such interests. But what unites us today is not the private interest ofthis group or that, but the interestthat God takes in us, to which we can calmly confide all our own interests and wishes. We are standing for the Lord. And the more we stand for the Lord and before the Lord, the more we stand with one another, and our capacity to understand one another grows again, the capacityto recognize each other as people,as brothers and sisters, and thus, in being together, to build the basis and to open up the possibilities of humanity and of life. Standing together in the Lord's presence, and with the Lord, has resulted from the beginning in what it has indeed at its heart presupposed, walking to the Lord . For we are not automatically side by side. That is why a statio could happen only if people gathered beforehand and went toeach other in the processio . That is the second call issued by CorpusChristi. We can stand side by side only if, first of all, under the guidance of the Lord, we go to each other. We can come to the Lord only in this procedere , in thismoving out and moving forward, by transcending our own prejudices, our limits, and our barriers, going forward, going toward him, and moving to the point at which we can meet each other. This also is as true in the realm of the Church as in the world. Even in the Church—let us lament before God—there are conflict, opposition, and mistrust. Processio, procedere , should challenge us to move forward again, to go ahead toward him, and to subject ourselves to his measure and in our common belief in him who became man, who gives himself to us as bread, once more trusting each other, opening up to each other, and together letting ourselves be led by him. The procession, which from an early period was a part of the stational worship in Rome, certainly did acquire a new dimension, a new depth, in Corpus Christi. For the Corpus Christi procession is no longer just walking to the Lord, to the eucharistic celebration; it is walking with the Lord; it is itself an element of eucharistic celebration, one dimension of the eucharistic event. The Lord who has become our bread is thus showing us the way, is in fact our way, as he leads us. In this fashion the Church offered a new interpretation of the Exodus story,of Israel's wandering in the wilderness, about which we heard in the reading. Israel travelsthrough the wilderness. And it is able to find a path in the pathless wilderness, because the Lord is leading it in the guise of cloud and of light. It can live in the pathless and lifeless wilderness because man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And so in this story of Israel's journey through the wilderness the underlying meaning of all human history is revealed. This Israel was able to find a country and was able to survive after the loss of that country because it did not live from bread alone, but found in the Word the strength to live on through all the pathless and homeless wilderness of the centuries. And this is thus an enduring sign set up for us all. Man finds his way only if he will let himself be led by him who is Word and bread in one. Only in walking with the Lord can we endure the peregrinations of our history. Thus Corpus Christi expounds the meaning of our whole life, of the whole history of the world: marching toward the promised land, a march that can keep on in the right direction onlyif we are walking with him who came among us as bread and Word. Today we know better thanearlier ages that indeed the wholelife of this world and the history of mankind is in movement, an incessant transformation, and moving onward.