JUNE112023

Several years ago there was a poll that suggested that almost half of Catholic adults did not believe in the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist. (A closer look at the poll showed it was flawed but that is another story.) To compound the concern, during the pandemic many Catholics got out of the habit of receiving Holy Communion and instead were comfortable in zooming Mass. The US bishops responded by announcing a three year long Eucharistic Revival. Having a Eucharistic Revival is certainly a good thing but the emphasis must be on what will really help Catholics to grow in an appreciation of how the Eucharist feeds (literally) one’s spiritual life. We don’t revive a genuine appreciation of the Eucharist merely by adoration or processions or benediction or Eucharistic miracles. Those aspects of Eucharistic piety can cause us to think of the Eucharist as a thing, an object, something extrinsic to us. The Eucharist is best understood as an action, a verb, or (as Pope Francis puts it) an encounter. Remember the Body of Christ is manifest in three different aspects: the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth as he lived among us, his followers who became the Church, and the Eucharistic elements of bread and wine that are offered at the altar.  These are not three different things but three sides of the same thing. Jesus is in his Church offering the bread and wine. The body of Christ is, as St. Paul puts it, one body. The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Jesus told us that the privileged way we have to encounter him is by receiving Holy Communion.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. The kind of Eucharistic Revival we need is one which transforms us, the Church who are the body of Christ, into the loving, forgiving, compassionate, generous manifestation that Jesus is truly present in our hearts.