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The pilgrim ready to meet Christ alive in the Eucharist

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If the Bible is the pilgrim’s book par excellence, “the Eucharist is the bread that feeds him on his way”.
The celebration of the Eucharist accompanies the various stages of the pilgrimage, because it has to reflect the Paschal events of the Exodus, but above all the Easter of Christ, at the end of his long journey towards the cross and glory.
It is only in this way that the pilgrimage will bear its fruits.
As John Paul II also said, “Each pilgrim, at the end of his journey in which his ardent heart aspires to see the face of God, is called to recognize the Saviour …in the shared bread”.
Hence the ardent desire of the Pope to visit the Cenacle “to celebrate the Eucharist.
It was here that Jesus instituted the ministerial Priesthood… In this holy place he promulgated the new commandment of love. I wanted to return as the successor of Peter, to the sources of the Church, in the place of the Last Supper and the First Eucharist”.
This place was sadly forbidden to Christians with the expulsion of the friars from Mount Sion, in 1551, and even today the celebration of the Eucharist is impossible there.
Fr. Artemio Vítores, ofm Vicary of the Custody of the Holy Land