The Real Presence

RICHARD A. SOKERKA

This Sunday, June 19, is an important date in the life of the Church in the United States. It is not only the date of the Feast of Corpus Christi, it is also the date when the National Eucharistic Revival will start.

The Feast of Corpus Christi is the beginning of a three-year grassroots revival of devotion and faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, culminating in the first National Eucharistic Congress in the United States since 1975. The congress will take place in Indianapolis in 2024.

To launch the revival on the Feast of Corpus Christi, on June 19, Eucharistic processions will be taking place in archdioceses and dioceses around the country. Here in the Diocese of Paterson in this Year of the Eucharist, Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney will be celebrating the noon Mass in Spanish in St. Paul Church in Prospect Park on the Feast of Corpus Christi and following the Mass there will be a Eucharistic procession.

The importance of this Eucharistic revival cannot be understated. It was conceived by the U.S. Bishops in response to a Pew Research Center study, which pointed out that astonishingly nearly two-thirds of U.S. Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence where at Mass the bread and wine become Christ’s Body and Blood during the Consecration.

The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is the Source and Summit of our Catholic faith and the Church’s life.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) approved plans for the revival and the congress last November during their fall general assembly. Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minn., chair of the USCCB’s Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis, is leading both initiatives.

“We are really aware in these times that we live that the Church needs to become more missionary. The culture itself doesn’t support what we do anymore as Catholics,” Bishop Cozzens said in a statement. “All Catholics are invited into a renewed encounter with Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, especially those Catholics who don’t fully understand the power of the Eucharist. As people are seeking deeper connection more than ever before, “this is a time not to be ashamed of the Gospel but to proclaim it from the rooftops.”

Bishop Cozzens said the Catholic Church could deepen the faithful’s understanding of the Eucharist with the revival and the congress by remembering that Christ said a lighted lamp does not belong under a bushel basket. “Set it up on a hill so that people can see it and be attracted to it,” the bishop said. “And I think that’s what we want to do with our teaching on the Eucharist.”

During the Year of the Eucharist in our Diocese and during this nationwide Eucharistic revival, we sincerely pray that the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the Source and Summit of our faith, will come to be known throughout our great nation, which is in such need of the healing presence of Christ among us and within us in the reception of Holy Communion.