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Throughout this Year of the Eucharist, we are asked to consider the great gift of the Eucharist in the Church and reflect on the appropriate response to this great gift. Gift and Response: When someone receives a gift, we rightly have expectations for that person. As a college student who received a scholarship, I was expected to work hard in school and achieve success. When commissioned as an Army officer, I was expected to work hard and share the suffering of soldiers in my command. In his Eucharis­tic gift, God makes himself small for us, so that we can grasp him, and he can make his love a part of us. How are we expected to respond to this unearned gift of love? God calls us to acknowledge our sins and change.

Food for the journey is a term often associated with viaticum, the communion that we may receive when we are very near death. The image of the Lord feeding us one more time before we pass from this life is profoundly beautiful and loving, but Food for the journey also brings to mind the unique story in Luke’s Gospel, the Road to Emmaus. The Risen Lord accompanies two disciples who are leaving Jerusalem. They are quite troubled over all that happened with Jesus, and as they journey, Jesus opens their minds to the ways in which Scripture foretold everything that must happen to him in order that he could accomplish our salvation. The travelers only recognize Jesus when he breaks the bread at supper, blesses it, and gives it to them. In this wonderful story, Jesus feeds their minds and their spirits even before they invite him to eat a meal with them.

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato observed, “There is nothing so delightful as the hearing, or the speaking of truth. For this reason, there is no conversation so agreeable as that of the man of integrity, who hears without any intention to betray, and speaks without any intention to deceive.” Plato points out what we know by experience: integrity is beautiful. Encountering persons of integrity is refreshing and attempting to live a life of integrity, though challenging, is rewarding.

Communion with Christ and the Church begins with the Domestic Church, the family. The faith that was nurtured in me, as one of nine in a loving, fun and devout Catholic family, has certainly inspired the passion and joy I have as Director of Family Faith at St. Vincent dePaul Parish in Stirling.

On the fourth Thursday of November each year, Americans gather with family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving. We shop for necessary ingredients, prepare favorite dishes, enjoy special drinks, participate in holiday activities, share generations-old traditions, learn treasured recipes, and engage in lively conversation. We do not simply sit at the table — we set the table, express gratitude, pass plates of food, wash endless dishes, cheer for our favorite football teams, share our families’ stories, remember Thanksgivings past, anticipate what is to come, and, hopefully, say thank you before we leave. We actively participate … until it’s nap time!

As a Protestant Christian who believed that the Eucharist was merely a symbol, I was once faced with a quote from an early Church Father, written within 100 years of Christ, regarding the Eucharist: “They do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again” (St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6.2). I reasoned my way around it at the time, but I later came to believe, and it changed my life.

T he story of sin is the backdrop for the tremendous gift that Christ has given us in the Eucharist. A deeper understanding of our own sinfulness is necessary to grasp how greatly we are in need of the Source of all life. Through original sin we inherited a darkened mind, a weakened will, and a vacillating heart. Without the grace of God given to us in Baptism strengthened by Confirmation and nourished by the Holy Eucharist, this selfishness dominates us. God responded to evil and sin by Love. Christ, by his death on the cross, proved that Love. To perpetuate that loving forgiveness, Christ has given us the means to atone for our sins. He unites us to himself in the reception of Holy Com­munion so we can offer true worship to the Father.

Earlier this year, on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Bishop Kevin J. Sweeney inaugurated a Year of the Eucharist in the Diocese of Paterson. The purpose of this year is to foster devotion, catechesis, and appreciation for the great gift of the Eucharist in the Church for the world. In November 2021, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) approved the document The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church, which was developed by the Com­mittee on Doctrine of the USCCB. The publication of this document providentially coincided with the diocese’s inauguration of the Year of the Eucharist.