Pope says Christ's life was sacrifice of love, not triumph

(August 20, 2012) Jesus did not seek an earthly throne and glory but chose instead to make people understand the difficult truth of “his sacrifice of love,” Pope Benedict XVI said on Sunday. “He did not seek popularity to conquer Jerusalem, and indeed, he desired to go to the Holy City, Jerusalem to share the fate of the prophets: to give his life for God and the people,” the Pope told pilgrims and tourists who had gathered at the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo to recite the midday ‘Angelus’ prayer with him. The Pope was commenting on Sunday’s Gospel reading where Jesus reveals to the multitude in Capernaum that he is “the living bread which came down from heaven,” and that “if any one eats of this bread, he will live forever.” The enthusiasm of the earlier miracle of the Multiplication of the Loaves would not result in a triumphal march but in the sacrifice of the cross, where Jesus would become the bread in atonement of the soul of the world, the Pope explained. The crowds are dismayed as Christ clarifies that this bread that he “shall give for the life of the world” is, in fact, his own “flesh.” This dampened enthusiasm and caused many disagreements among his disciplines, and “many of them no longer followed him.” Jesus subsequently established the Sacrament of the Eucharist at the Last Supper so “that his disciples may have in themselves his charity and, as one body united to him, extend in the world his mystery of salvation.” “May we always hunger for the gift of his presence in the Eucharistic sacrifice, wherein Jesus gives us his very self as food and drink to sustain us on our pilgrim journey to the Father,” the Pope added