Many Catholic dioceses in China celebrate the Eucharist with annual or biennial events that have become part of ordinary pastoral work. The Holy See, too, in its negotiations with Beijing, follows the guiding criterion of safeguarding the sacramental nature of the Church, setting aside suspicions and uncertainties about the effectiveness of the sacraments administered in Chinese Catholic communities.
Thousands paraded down the streets of the city, despite threats of thunderstorms that at one point turned into pouring rain. On Sunday 8 July, the eve of the commemoration of the Chinese martyrs, the Catholics of Fengxiang concluded their diocesan Eucharistic Congress with this public and solemn celebration. For the occasion, the Cathedral was decorated in a special way. The Eucharistic procession, which began after the solemn liturgy, paraded for more than an hour and a half through the city streets. Hundreds of children opened the procession, followed by priests, religious men and women, and then by the multitude of young and adult faithful. As the procession passed by, the curious crowded up along the streets. In Fengxiang, the Diocesan Eucharistic Congress is organized once every two years. Its paradoxical singularity consists in having become a frequent and almost ordinary appointment in the pastoral program of that diocesan Church.
The “Patriarch” Lucas Li
Bishop Lucas Li Jingfeng, who died in November 2017 at the venerable age of 95, encouraged the celebration of the Eucharistic Congress in the diocese of Shaanxi. Lucas Li was one of the “patriarchs” of the Catholic Church in China in his last troubled decades. His episcopal ordination, which took place in 1980, had not initially been recognized by the government apparatus. Then, with time, his relationship with them had evolved, the government had recognized him as bishop and he had entered into public contact with civil authority. The elderly bishop was enthusiastic about the “Letter” to Chinese Catholics published in 2007 by Benedict XVI. In his opinion, that document indicated “the only way and hope to erase the discord and lack of peace that are present in the Church in China”. Pope Benedict, in 2005, had also tried to invite Lucas Li and three other Chinese bishops to the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist (an opportunity denied by the Beijing government).
Infectious devotions
The participation of so many people in this year’s diocesan Eucharistic Congress, the first without Bishop Lucas Li, is a sign that the fervor of community gestures has not lost its intensity even after his death. But the practice of celebrating the Eucharistic Congresses as frequently and intensely is not an exclusive of the diocese of Fengxiang. In recent decades, the same has happened in a growing number of Chinese Catholic dioceses. In Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province, the first diocesan Eucharistic Congress in the history of the diocese was held in June 2005. Since then, that event has taken place annually in the programming of diocesan pastoral work. In the diocese of Tianjin, thousands of faithful already participated in the first Eucharistic Congress celebrated at the village of Xiao Han Cun in May 2012, convened to revive within priests, religious people and laity “the faith in Jesus Christ present in the Eucharist, to be able to bear witness to it with courage”.
A treasure to cherish
From the last decades of the last century, with the reopening wanted by Deng Xiaoping after the dark years of the Cultural Revolution, ecclesial life in China has returned to coagulate and take strength precisely around the sacraments and the most ordinary spiritual practices of the Christian people. The possibility of drawing more easily and without prohibitive obstacles on the treasure of the sacraments has fed in an ordinary and non-clamorous way the faith of Chinese Catholics along the path - full of anomalies, difficulties, sufferings - of the last decades. The reports relaunched by Fides, the agency of the Pontifical Mission Societies, have documented the intense adherence of the Chinese dioceses and parishes to the impulses launched by the Popes to recall the sacramental nature of the Church, such as the Year of the Eucharist and the Jubilee of Mercy, which saw the “ of Chinese Catholics “racing” to the Gates of Mercy and the confessionals. But in People’s China the baptized were able to experience the sacramental dynamism that animates the Church above all in the practices of the ordinary pastoral of the parishes. Or in spontaneous initiatives such as the “Familiar Eucharistic Adoration”, a movement that some years ago spread among Catholics in Wenzhou and in the province of Zhejiang, involving families willing to host a Eucharistic altar in their homes for a time ranging from 12 to 24 hours. Or, again, the moments of Eucharistic adoration frequently scheduled in the four central churches of Beijing.
The treasure put at risk
Relying on the grace of the sacraments has guided and made fruitful in recent decades the ordinary pastoral care of Chinese catholicity. And it represents a precious reminder of the apostolic and sacramental source of authentic ecclesial life. This was made even more evident by the circumstances that in China, in particular, risked raising shadows and uncertainties about the effectiveness and validity of the sacraments administered in so many Chinese parishes. The ecclesial laceration that in China has divided - and often continues to divide - “official” and “underground” communities has produced as the most poisonous fruit precisely the suspicions and accusations that involved the treasure of the sacraments.
Also in the path of dialogue with the Chinese government, the Holy See has as its guiding criterion, that of doing everything possible so that shadows of uncertainty - mostly regarding the legitimacy of the apostolic succession and the effectiveness of the sacraments administered in every Chinese church, chapel and Catholic community - are no longer cast. So that the grace of the sacraments and of prayer may nourish the life of the faithful more easily, without it being veiled with suspicion, division, reproaches and recriminations.
