Faithful Invited to Follow Pope, Adore Eucharist

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 10, 2009 MARCH 10, 2009 (Zenit.org).- In this secularized era, Catholics should follow Benedict XVI's example and recover the practice of Eucharistic adoration, says a Vatican official.

Cardinal Antonio Cañizares, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, affirmed this to Vatican Radio, as he spoke about the plenary assembly his dicastery is holding this week.

"The liturgy is, above all, adoration," he explained. "The Church is the work of God, God's action; it is recognition of what God does for men. And the adoration that the liturgy expresses, especially the Eucharist, is the acknowledgment of God, that everything comes from him, that everything that belongs to us must find him."

Precisely in the present context of secularization, in which there is a tendency "to forget God, to consider him not very important for life," it is appropriate to "reaffirm that God comes first," the cardinal declared. "This is what will change the life of Christians and of the Church." When the Church "forgets that God is the center of everything, it becomes a merely human institution."