Fourth Truth of Love Conference: “The Eucharist and the Logic of the Gift”

From June 21 to 23, 2024, the Franciscan University of Steubenville together with the Veritas Amoris Project held the fourth “Truth of Love Conference.” This year’s topic was “‘My Body Given for You’ (Lk 22:19). The Eucharist and the Logic of the Gift.”

The event saw the participation of scholars from the United States, Spain, Italy, and Germany.

Inserting itself into the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ initiative for a National Eucharistic Revival, the conference’s main goal was to reflect on how Christ, in the institution of the Eucharist, established the logic of the gift as a paradigm for understanding the body.

The body is not the person’s simple and unqualified possession that can be isolated, altered, or disposed of at will. As the Eucharistic body is a “body given for you,” so the human person’s body, too, is a body that is given—we have received our body as a gift and are called to treat it like a gift and make it a gift.

The conference explored this logic from three perspectives: the “body given” in response to a vocation; the “body given” as it transforms our moral life, and the “body given” as a social body, embedded in the Church and in society, and thus in history and tradition.

On Saturday evening Most Reverend Earl K. Fernandes, Bishop of Columbus, Ohio, presented the keynote address, entitled: “The Wedding Feast of Cana and the Eucharistic Mystery.”

After each presentation, there was ample room for dialogue with all participants.

The Veritas Amoris Project hopes to publish many of the excellent presentations in the Veritas Amoris Review in the coming weeks and months.

(Scroll down on linked page to see the videos)