Sunday, November 20th
4:00
pm, Conference #1, followed by Vespers
Our Goals for
the Three Years of Eucharistic Revival
O
Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, All Praise and All Thanksgiving, Be
Every Moment Thine!
In
preparation for our 40 Hours, I looked at a short video recently which notes
that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops foresees this particular devotion (40
Hours) as one of the components of the National Eucharistic Revival presently
under way in our country. That’s good! Even if I may not be up on many things
that are going on in the Church and am not a member of the Bishops’ Conference,
I find this to be good news. Besides, one of the neat things about being
retired is I can always use my status as a retired person as my excuse for not
really being a mover and shaker on policy issues, pastoral or otherwise. From looking
at the part of the diocesan website devoted to the various aspects of the same Campaign
launched earlier this year on Corpus Christi Sunday, year one for the planned
three-year Eucharistic Revival here in the U.S. there are some good things
there to report.
In
the end, regardless of how things turn out nationally or of whether the big
Eucharistic Congress planned at the conclusion of the three years to be held in
Indianapolis, Indiana, will be kind of a high point or climax to the whole
effort, my first interest and priority really is to do my part to revive or
deepen the faith in the true Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist and please
God, do so especially here in our diocese and, yes, most especially right here
and right now in your Parish of St. Thomas in Madison, SD. I think the matter
is important and I think that the need for renewal is a very real one, even
here in God’s Country.
In
the video they talked about doing 40 Hours around the States at least at
deanery level if not in every parish during this first year of the Revival
Campaign. In point of fact, this weekend our 40 Hours also has relevance for
the whole Brookings Deanery. We will see how combining the two things (our 40 Hours
and the Diocesan Road Show for the Eucharistic Revival) works out here for the
Deanery. It would be my hope that the two efforts will complement each other
and mutually enrich one another.
As
I read on the website, the diocesan campaign is meant to transform our parishes
and the diocese, starting from this grassroots level, and thereby to have a
powerful positive impact on the Church at large. The internet page devoted to
Eucharistic Revival has two great prayers to download. Of the two, I especially
like Bishop DeGrood's Prayer for the Diocese.
Almighty
God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Thank you for your great love for us. Help us
to know, love and serve you above all other things. Fill our hearts and minds
with a deep knowledge and love of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed
Sacrament. Through Mass, adoration and other forms of
prayer and service may we be fruitful missionary disciples by loving you,
others and ourselves as you love us. Deliver us from all evil and heal,
convert, form and unify everyone in your merciful love. Please inspire and
raise up many healthy, happy and holy vocations to the priesthood, diaconate,
marriage and consecrated life. Come Holy Spirit, enlighten, guide and
inspire us to make good choices according to the Father’s holy will for the
wellbeing of all. Amen
My
recommendation would be for us in this my first talk of our 40 Hours to let
Bishop DeGrood’s prayer inform our reflection and dictate the parish goals here
in Madison for the three year revival. Let me quote or draw out three sentences
from Bishop’s prayer!
2)
Deliver us from all evil and heal, convert, form,
and unify everyone in the merciful love of the Blessed Trinity.
I
hope no one will be puzzled if I say that the first of these three intentions
is the hardest one for me to explain.
Through Mass,
adoration and other forms of prayer and service may we be fruitful missionary disciples by
loving our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, by loving others and ourselves as
God loves us.
When I
say that Number 1 is the hardest, I do not mean that it is the hardest to understand
of the three, but rather that it is the hardest to get a handle on.
This
first intention of Bishop’s prayer is clear enough and very succinct. The Bishop
explains just how I/you can be a fruitful missionary disciple. We can do
so simply by loving our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, by loving others
and ourselves as God loves us. Basically in terms of the Gospels and of
what we learned back in catechism, we can reach our missionary goal by living
out the two great Commandments: You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. For
us Catholics as indicated by Christ and His Church, the road less traveled to
that goal passes by way of the Mass, adoration and other forms of prayer and
service. Even so, at the core of the matter are the two great commandments
of love of God and love of neighbor.
We don’t need an excuse for inviting the
whole Church and our parish in particular to a Eucharistic Revival. To deepen
our faith in Christ truly present in the Holy Eucharist is beyond a doubt a
good thing. Truth to be told, it is an absolute necessity. Sadly, however, today
in the Church, we find ourselves in the midst of a crisis of faith. According
to various surveys taken here in the US, not even a third of the people who
claim to be Catholics believe in the doctrine of the transubstantiation. That
is bad enough, but the real shock is that many people unashamedly declare that they
do not believe that in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass through the words of
consecration spoken by the priest, the bread and wine, while preserving their
outward appearance, truly and substantially become the Body and Blood of Jesus
Christ, our Savior, and our Lord. Perhaps even worse, despite their unbelief
these people march up and take Holy Communion (Please
note: The word “take” is improper. We don’t take Holy Communion but rather we
receive the Lord in Holy Communion.). Such people doubt the teaching of the
Church and they do it openly and without shame. I guess we could blame it on
ignorance or lack of culture. However you cut it, it boils down to the same
misery. There are countless people claiming to be Catholic who don’t believe
what the Catholic Church has taught about the Eucharist always and everywhere.
What is the problem? Well, granted faith
in the true Presence has always been a struggle, but probably not since the
Protestant Reformation or before that since the crisis of faith which occasioned
the Eucharistic miracle and the feast of Corpus Christi, has there been such a
crisis of faith in the real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Today numbers
of people like never before since the great apostasies are unashamedly denying
Christ’s Presence, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, upon our altars. That is a
big problem which strikes at the very heart of what it means to be Catholic, of
what it means to be part of the one Church founded by Jesus Christ to continue
His work of salvation until the end of time.
Bishop DeGrood’s prayer is that through
Mass, adoration and other forms of prayer and service may we be fruitful
missionary disciples… That involves doing more than just going through the
motions on our own terms. Sixty years ago the fathers at the II Vatican Council
talked about and encouraged the active participation of the faithful at the
Sacred Liturgy. Unfortunately, too often we have missed the point on the
significance of that concept, saddling ourselves with a lot of tasteless music,
meant to be popular, with a failure to be attentive in church, especially to
dress respectably, to keep silence and focus our attention on the sacred action
which unfolds through the ministry of the priest. A half century along, still
battling with sound systems in church, we have failed to gain the upper hand
for a discursive, talk or discussion based model of worship. Maybe we can hear
and understand the priest or deacon, but more often than not the service of
lectors is a hit and miss affair. What is it or how is it that we should be fed
at Sunday Mass? Is it the talk which counts?
One of the most interesting and exciting
developments of recent years in the Catholic Church has been the growth in
popularity of Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.
There are countless witnesses in the Church of people who have found their way
back to the practice of the faith through Adoration. Any number of young people
have discovered vocations to priesthood and to the religious life contemplating
Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament exposed upon our altars. Through Mass, adoration
and other forms of prayer and service may we be fruitful missionary disciples.
Too
many people seem to claim the right to refashion the Church in their own image
or preference. Somehow, they miss the point that Sunday in the Catholic Church
was never intended to be, nor can it be a bible thumping, knee slapping,
sing-along. When St. Justin Martyr, who died a martyr’s death in the year 165 precisely
because of his attachment to Sunday Mass, declared that he and his fellow
Christians could not live without Sunday, he was talking about the celebration of
the Holy Eucharist, the weekly renewal in an unbloody fashion of Christ’s once
and for all sacrifice for the salvation of the world on the Cross of Calvary. The
“gathering us in” is not the primary action of the Mass. While keeping the two
great commandments of love of God and love of neighbor is the prime part of
Bishop’s first petition, we must see it in a specifically Catholic way as
centered on the action of the priest in the liturgy, enriched by our ongoing
personal prayer and works of charity. Through Mass, adoration and other
forms of prayer and service may we be fruitful missionary disciples.
In the
old days of 40 Hours, the preacher could go on for hours, but I am aware that
ADS (attention deficit syndrome) is not so much a defect as it is the
recognition that a preacher can overdo it. I better get on to the other two
petitions in Bishop’s prayer!
Bishop
DeGrood’s second intention: Deliver us from all evil
and heal, convert, form, and unify everyone in the merciful love of the Blessed
Trinity.
We
need to pray and do so constantly: Lord, spare Your people! Deliver us! Not
only through Your direct intervention in the life of the world and in our
lives, but through the other Sacraments beyond the Holy Eucharist!
The
statistics tell us that if parents are joyfully welcoming children into our
world, nonetheless they are sometimes dragging their feet or even failing to
have those children delivered from the power of evil through the saving waters
of Baptism. There is no excuse for not baptizing children if we truly love
them. If it is in our power, we should want to free a child from the power of Satan
as soon as we can after birth and then through our own teaching and good
example to lead them to Christ and at the proper time strengthen them for the fight
against the minions of Hell through the grace of the Holy Spirit in
Confirmation. That is what the Catholic Church believes and teaches even yet
today.
Deliver
us from all evil and heal, convert, form, and unify everyone in the merciful
love of the Blessed Trinity.
Let
us add the Sacrament of Penance, unto the forgiveness of serious sin committed after
Baptism, and the Anointing of the Sick for those in danger of death especially
to those graces available from the sacraments to heal, convert, form, and unify
all whom the Lord wills to save and sanctify.
Just
a few words on Confession, on the Sacrament of Penance! We know that we should
have recourse to the Sacrament of Reconciliation whenever and as soon as
possible, if we are aware of serious, mortal sin in our lives. You cannot excuse
yourself from the objective moral order nor from the precepts of the Church
which bind us under pain of grave sin. The most common failing among adult
Catholics has to do with missing Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.
We know that in the case of impossibility we are not bound. But too many people
excuse themselves on any pretext. If you miss Mass through your own fault, then
you need to get to confession as soon as possible and not approach to receive
Holy Communion until you have been absolved and done your penance. From what Father
tells me about your schedule of confession times here in the parish, you are
fortunate and with an honest effort should have no difficulty getting to
confession.
(U)nify
everyone in the merciful love of the Blessed Trinity. Because
of the orderly way we come up to Communion, people feel under pressure to come
up and receive Holy Communion worthy or not. Believe it or not, nobody else is
or should be paying any attention to you at Communion time. They should be
focusing themselves on the Lord Who comes to feed them. Besides, if people were
more serious about keeping the fast before Holy Communion and not just sticking
their chewing gum under the seat of the pew at the last minute, they would
think twice about their being unprepared or irreverent in the way they receive.
By way of an aside, I am beginning to suspect that probably gum or other chews
or breath mints are a very good argument against the reception of Communion in
the hand. I repeat: Talk of “taking Communion” is improper. We don’t take Holy
Communion but rather we receive the Lord in Holy Communion. I know hand
Communion is legal but I would invite you to give some thought to whether you
might better focus on the Lord by receiving Him on the tongue, and why not, on
bended knee.
And
Bishop’s third petition: Please inspire and raise up many healthy, happy,
and holy vocations to the priesthood, diaconate, marriage, and consecrated
life.
A
big part of Eucharistic Revival is having the sacraments available and despite
what some people in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland will claim, that can only
happen if we have priests. Why has our diocese always been short on homegrown
priestly vocations? I remember as a young man, as a seminarian, hearing Bishop
Hoch, a native vocation from Elkton, explain his determination not to go to
Ireland to recruit priests for the diocese of Sioux Falls. He said, “People in
this diocese have to learn to provide.” 50 years later we are still waiting. My
prayer for vocations goes: “from our parishes, from our families, from our
homes”. Parents and Grandparents, your witness of faith in Jesus really and
truly present in the Blessed Sacrament not only could be but is that which will
inspire enough young boys to be kneeling down by their beds to say their nighttime
prayers and add: “O Lord, grant that I might become a priest after Thine Own
Heart!” It is a matter of faith, which would draw with it vocations to
religious orders both of women and of men, apostolic, monastic, and
contemplative. One of my great discoveries in these almost two years since
retiring home here to Sioux Falls is what a gift a good and holy permanent
deacon can be to a parish or apostolate in rallying people to Christ the Good
Shepherd.
I
better stop and invite you to take time then, if you have not already done so here
before the Blessed Sacrament, to examine your conscience. Pray like that poor
dad in the Gospel, who cried out when challenged by Jesus for having requested
the sign of his child’s healing, “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!”
Eucharistic
Revival is the cornerstone for the success of any other undertaking for us
personally, in our families, in our parish, for the sake of the life of the
Church. We’ve go work to do! We are too much in denial! Our lives need to
change! As St. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 6,11-13:
“We
have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is
no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return - I speak as to
children - open wide your hearts also.” [Harper Bibles. NRSV
Catholic Edition Bible (pp. 1070-1071). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.]
O
Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, All Praise and All Thanksgiving, Be
Every Moment Thine!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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