Why the Pope Would Write an Encyclical on the Eucharist “To Rekindle This Amazement” VATICAN CITY, APRIL 17, 2003 (Zenit.org) Why has John Paul II written an encyclical on the Eucharist?
The Pope himself answers this question in “Ecclesia de Eucharistia,” explaining that the Church will only be able to address the challenge of the new evangelization if she is able to contemplate, and enter into a profound relationship with Christ in the sacrament that makes his presence real. In No. 6, the Pope is explicit in expressing the objectives of his 14th encyclical. “I would like to rekindle this Eucharistic ‘amazement’ by the present Encyclical Letter, in continuity with the Jubilee heritage which I have left to the Church in the Apostolic Letter ‘Novo Millennio Ineunte’ and its Marian crowning, ‘Rosarium Virginis Mariae,'” he says. The latter is a reference to his apostolic letter of last October on the rosary. “To contemplate the face of Christ, and to contemplate it with Mary, is the program which I have set before the Church at the dawn of the third millennium, summoning her to put out into the deep on the sea of history with the enthusiasm of the new evangelization,” he
