Eucharistic revival

RICHARD A. SOKERKA

Our Diocese is in the midst of the Year of the Eucharist, which Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney officially launched on Jan. 9, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The Bishop declared the yearlong celebration to encourage local Catholics to deepen “their appreciation of Jesus — Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity — in the Eucharist.

Bishop Sweeney urged the faithful together as part of parishes, high schools, colleges, and other small groups to read and study, “Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church,” a document issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which is addressed to all Catholics and “endeavors to explain the centrality of the Eucharist in the life of the Church.”

“This Year of the Eucharist is an opportunity to reflect, pray, and encounter God in our midst in our lives,” he said.

In addition, in this week’s issue, The Beacon starts an eight-week series of articles on the Eucharist.

The highlight of the Year of the Eucharist will be the Diocese’s Eucharistic Congress to be held Sept. 23–25 with Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization in Rome, as keynote speaker,

In concert with the Diocese’s Year of the Eucharist is the U.S. Catholic Church’s three-year National Eucharistic Revival, which begins June 19, the feast of Corpus Christi, and culminates with the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis in 2024, the first to be held since 1976 in Philadelphia.

Tim Glemkowski, executive director of the National Eucharistic Congress, sees the revival and the congress as “a milestone moment” for the Church and “a generational moment” that can really change lives.

Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minn., chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Evangeli­zation and Catechesis, said the 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.”

A 2019 Pew survey shockingly showed just 30 percent of Catholics understand the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In that survey, 69 percent of all self-identified Catholics said they believed the bread and wine used at Mass are not Jesus, but instead “symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.” The results struck a deep nerve with many U.S. bishops, who saw a catechetical crisis in this lack of fundamental understanding about the Eucharist and the three-year National Eucharistic Revival was their answer.

In his encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, (“The Church from the Eucharist”), St. Pope John Paul II writes, “The Church has received the Eucharist from Christ her Lord, not as one gift — however precious — among so many others, but as the gift par excellence, for it is the gift of himself, of his person in his sacred humanity, as well as all that Christ is — all that he did and suffered for all men — participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all times” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 11).

May this Year of the Eucharist in our Diocese and the Eucharistic revival nationwide bring all Catholics to understand and to know with absolute certainty that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist, the source and summit of our faith!