Yesterday, Pope Benedict visited a youth center in Rome. He ad-libbed his homily, Teresa Benedetta has translated. An excerpt-

We can say that all science is one great battle for life, above all, the science of medicine. Ultimately, medicine is a search for an antidote to death, a quest for immortality. But can we find the medicine that will assure us immortality? That is the question posed by the Gospel today.

Let us try to imagine what would happen if medicine did find this prescription against death, the prescription for immortality. Even in such a case, it would still have to do with medical means within the biosphere, medicine that is useful for our spiritual and human life, but by itself, still confined to the biosphere.
It is easy to imagine what would happen if man’s biological life were without end, if man were immortal. We would find ourselves in an ‘old world’, a world full of aged people, a world that would leave little room for the young, for the renewal of life.
So we understand that this is not the immortality that we aspire to. This is not the possibility of drinking at the fountain of life that we all desire.
At this point in which, on the one hand, we understand that we cannnot hope for an infinite prolongation of biological life, while on the other hand, we desire to drink at the fountain of life to enjoy ‘life without end’, the Lord intervenes and speaks to us from the Gospel to say: “I am the Resurrection and the Life: whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live; whoever lives and believes in me, will not die in eternity”.

“I am the Resurrection”: To drink at the fountain of life is to enter in communion with this infinite love which is the source of life. Encountering Christ, we enter into contact – better, into communion –
with life itself, and we would then have crossed the threshold of death, because we are in touch – beyond biological life – with true life.
The Fathers of the Church called the Eucharist the drug of immortality. That is so, because in the Eucharist, we enter into contact and communion with the resurrected Body of Christ – we enter the space of life that has been resurrected, of eternal life.
We enter into communion with this Body which has immortal life, and therefore we ourselves, now and for always, enter the space of life itself.
Thus, this Gospel is also a profound interpretaiton of what the Eucharist is and invites us to really live the Eucharist so that we can be transformed in the communion of love. This is the true life.
In Johm’s Gospel, the Lord says: “Ihave come so that you may have life, and have life in abundance.” A life in abundance is not, as some may think, to consume everything, to have everything, to do everything one pleases. In such a case, we would live for dead things, we would live for death.

Life in abundance is to be in communion with true life, with infinite love. It is this way that we truly enter into the abundance of life and we become bearers of life even for others.
Prisoners of war who had been in Russia for ten years or more, exposed to cold and hunger, would say upon returning: “I could survive because I knew I was being awaited. I knew there were persons who waited to see me back, that I was neeeded and awaited.” This love that awaited them was the effective medicine of life against all ills.
In truth, we are all awaited. The Lord awaits us but more than that, he is present and holds his hand out to us. Let us accept the Lord’s hand and pray to him that he may grant us to live truly, to live the abundance of life and thus be able to communicate to our contemporaries this true life, this life in abundance. Amen.