By Bishop James Conley
As Catholics, we have just celebrated within the context of the liturgical year the great mysteries of our faith.
During the season of Lent, we meditated on the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ for us, that led ultimately to his passion and death on Good Friday. It’s a reflection that Jesus is truly our savior—he has come to our rescue. We united ourselves to the passion of Christ through an increase of our own prayer, fasting and almsgiving to rejoice ever more abundantly in Christ’s glorious resurrection on Easter Sunday.
The Lord invites us to share in that resurrection of Jesus, which is the source of our greatest hope. No matter what is happening in our lives right now, joys or sorrows, frustration or contentment, anxiety or peace, we believe firmly that God has called us to be with him for all eternity to live in his love.
The Church blesses us with a 50-day celebration of this hope in Christ through the Easter season with the celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday, Christ’s Ascension into heaven and concluding at Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit, a reminder that God remains with us always.
This past weekend we celebrated the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, translated literally as “the Body of Christ.” The Eucharist remains for us a sacramental reality, an enduring memorial that God is truly with us, that he has not left us orphans.
Our Lord’s saving action and the promise of eternal life is the greatest gift to us, and the Eucharist is a reminder to us of that gift. As St. Thomas Aquinas said, “to ensure that the memory of so great a gift would abide with us forever, he left his body as food and his blood as drink for the faithful to consume in the form of bread and wine.”
When I was studying at the University of Kansas but not yet a Catholic, the truth of the Real Presence of Jesus was instrumental to my eventual conversion to the Catholic faith. The words of Jesus in John’s Gospel, chapter 6, continued to intrigue me: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day” (John 6: 53-54). If I really believed these words to be true, then I had to become Catholic. At the same time, I realized that if I really believed these words to be true, I could never walk away from this new-found faith.
Jesus truly present in the Holy Eucharist has been so instrumental and transformative in my own life that I can’t imagine my life without it. There is nothing I want more for the people of the Diocese of Lincoln than to enkindle Eucharistic wonder in their hearts.
I’m not naïve about the cultural scene regarding belief in our Eucharistic Lord. Particularly troubling to me is a 2019 Pew study (before the pandemic) which claimed that as many as 70% of Catholics in the United States do not believe that Jesus is really present in the Holy Eucharist.
There are many likely reasons for this eye-opening statistic. It necessitates a kind of examination of conscience certainly for bishops but for all the Catholic faithful. We live in a post-Christian world where secularism prevails. Many live as practical atheists, in which they pay lip service to some kind of God or higher being, but not with any sense that he wants to enter into our everyday lives. This notion is especially tempting in times of relative prosperity where the need for God may not even cross our minds, as all our needs seem to be met.
We must factor in the cultural influences that are harmful to the faith. We can’t live our lives with our heads in the sand. Nevertheless, we are called to transcend the culture. Since the time of Christ, the Gospel has found a place in the most anti-Christian of cultures—and it has often changed and shaped them.
During the Passover in Egypt, the Lord instructed the blood of the paschal lamb to be sprinkled on the doorposts of the Israelites’ homes. This served as protection against the angel of death. The sacrifice of animals continued throughout the time of the Israelites, giving a degree of healing and sanctity to them. This blood was a sign of their covenant with God. But these sacrifices were imperfect, and awaited a perfect sacrifice.
It is in this light that we understand Paul’s words in the Letter to the Hebrews: “If the blood of goats and bulls… can sanctify… how much more will the blood of Christ sanctify our consciences” (Heb. 9:14). How much more indeed! In the gift of the Eucharist, Jesus hands over to us his whole self; he gives his very Body and Blood.
The Eucharist has healing power. We may live in a fairly prosperous society, but wealth and security cannot satisfy what the human heart longs for; it cannot heal to the core. Human hearts ache with loneliness, guilt, betrayal, addiction, boredom and so many other spiritual ailments. The world needs healing. And Jesus wants to heal us.
Bishops and all the faithful are tasked to present the Eucharist as this healing presence that is right here in our midst. We are not simply to bemoan the lack of faith in our culture, but to do something about it. Jesus is the answer to every longing in the human heart. When we come to know and live that truth, it changes everything.
The Bishops of the United States are attentive to the need to lead people back to Eucharistic amazement and love. We desire to bring about a greater understanding of the beauty, mystery, and wonder of the Holy Eucharist.
To this end, the Bishops of the United States have chosen to launch a Eucharistic Revival over the next three years, beginning this past Sunday, June 19, the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. The Eucharistic Revival is an initiative that aims to inspire, educate, and unite. From now through June of 2023, each diocese will offer events to promote and inspire understanding of the Eucharist.
The training of “eucharistic missionaries” will come through online and in-person resources that teach about Christ and the Real Presence. The revival will include a national Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis from July 17-21, 2024. From that historic event—the last national Eucharistic Congress was in 1976 in the city of Philadelphia—the Church will send us all out as missionary disciples in the final year of the Eucharistic Revival 2024-2025, to be Eucharistic evangelizers in our world today.
I know that some are understandably worried about another new program that we are bound to follow. I don’t see this as a program. Bishop Andrew Cozzens, the Bishop of Crookston, Minn. and the leader of the Eucharistic revival described it as lighting a fire, not starting a program.
In the Holy Eucharist, we have a true blessing. It’s where we worship our Risen Lord in his humble disguise of bread and wine. I look forward to the many graces that will come to Catholic and non-Catholic alike over the next three years as our Lord Jesus sets fire in our hearts.
