[…] The second attitude is that of service. The Eucharistic community, by sharing in
the lot of Jesus the Servant, becomes itself “servant”: by eating the “body that is
given”, it becomes the “body given up for many”. By constantly returning to the
“upper room” (cf. Acts 1:13), the womb of the Church, where Jesus washed the feet
of his disciples, Christians serve the cause of the Gospel by being present in places
of frailty, under the shadow of the cross, in order to share and to bring healing. How
many situations there are in the Church and in society on which the balm of mercy
can be poured through spiritual and corporal works! We think of families in difficulty,
young people and adults without work, the sick and the elderly who are abandoned,
migrants experiencing hardship and acts of violence – and rejected, and also many
other forms of poverty. In these places of wounded humanity, Christians celebrate
the memorial of the Cross and make living and present the Gospel of Jesus the
Servant, who gave himself up for us out of love. The baptized thus spread the seeds
of a Eucharistic culture by becoming servants of the poor, not in the name of an
ideology but of the Gospel itself, which becomes a rule of life for individuals and
communities. We see this in the constant witness borne by so many saints of charity,
men and women alike. […]
