Vatican II responds to urgent need for God, cardinal says

The prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments said that the Second Vatican Council enabled the Church to “undertake the evangelization of contemporary man.”

At a Sept. 27 conference in Peru, Cardinal Antonio Canizares said the council arose “out of the urgency to bring the Church closer to the world, and especially out of the urgent need for God.”

The cardinal made his remarks at the event titled “Vatican Council II: Gift and Prophecy,” which was held at the country's international theological congress, “Firm in the Faith, Be Strong.”

Cardinal Canizares invited the more than 4,500 attendees at the congress to learn and study Vatican II in its entirety, as the council “will not bear fruit without a persevering effort in our vocation to holiness.”

“Only in this way can we become truly Christians. By living out our vocation to holiness will we our Church be renewed,” he added.

“The central idea of the Second Vatican Council and the Church is God himself, and therefore it is important and necessary that the Eucharist be the center of the Christian life,” Cardinal Canizares underscored.

“Only by recovering the meaning of the Eucharist will the future be possible, only by recovering the true meaning of the Eucharist will real evangelization be possible, only in this way will find the way to holiness,” he said.