by Bishop James Conley
The past two issues of the Southern Nebraska Register had front-page stories of two individuals who successfully completed the Eucharistic Passport Pilgrimage across the Diocese of Lincoln, along with their family members and friends. One was from Cristo Rey Parish in Lincoln, and the other was from St. Mary Parish in Wallace, in the western part of our diocese.
Both stories are uniquely different, and tell of the deep Eucharistic faith, living in the hearts of our faithful. They tell of the struggles and sacrifices of ordinary human life: health challenges, marriage and family trials, immigration obstacles, and the perseverance of faith in the Holy Eucharist. I was both edified and humbled by these beautiful stories of how the Lord is moving hearts through the grace of the Eucharistic Revival.
As we make our final preparations to celebrate the birth of our Savior on Christmas day, I am reminded of the essential meaning of Christmas which is this. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Saint John also reminds us in his first letter that “God is Love” (1 John 4:16). In the incarnation and birth of Jesus, God is now made visible, as a little child in the stable of Bethlehem. He is Emmanuel which means God is with us.
And John goes on to say that God wants us to remain in his love until the end of time, “… whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.” Therefore, we can rightly say that if God is love, and the Holy Eucharist is really and truly God; body, blood, soul, and divinity, then the Holy Eucharist is Love Made Visible. This is why there is such an intimate connection between Christmas and the Holy Eucharist, between the incarnation and Eucharistic Adoration.
In my pastoral letter, “Love Made Visible,” from Holy Thursday in 2017, I wrote these words:
We are made for love.
We are made to love, and to be loved.
Each one of us longs to be loved, because love is the source and the meaning of our lives. Without love, our lives feel empty, meaningless, and lonely. Most of us have found that nothing can take the place of love—nothing can satisfy us but love, given and received, by which we experience the love of God.
We are made by Love, in the image of Love, and for the purpose of Love—because God is love, and God has created each one of us in and through love.
Indeed, love is at the center of what it means to be a person. And the whole Christian mystery is the story of God’s love for us—the love of Jesus Christ, who came into the world for love.
Christ came into the world because the bonds of love between God and mankind had been broken by sin, and only he could repair them. He came because God loves us enough to atone for our sins. He came in love to undo the brokenness, pain, emptiness, and death brought forth by our frequent failure to love. He came to accept the death we deserve as sinners, to die so that we could have life. He came to save the world, through love. In love, he became a sacrifice to atone for our sin and to bring salvation to the world.
Love is selfless sacrifice, and sacrifice is the language of love. Love is the gift of ourselves to our beloved. And Christ made a gift of himself—he gave us his body and blood—poured himself out for our salvation when he conquered death by dying and rising again.
Christ gave us his body and blood, as an act of love, so that we could know the love of God.
St. John proclaimed at the very beginning of his Gospel, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Because of the Incarnation and birth of Jesus in the world, we see everything differently. The world is a different place. We see the world through the lens of the Incarnation now. Because the Word became flesh, we see everything from a new perspective, in a new light. The lens of faith allows us to interpret everything in light of our faith, and we should. Furthermore, because Jesus left us his Church, we can now make better sense of the world.
As my good friend, Francis X. Maier said recently in a column for the The Catholic Thing:
God’s Word is a person, not merely a book or an idea. He became flesh. He dwelled among us. And He bequeathed to us the Church out of love, as the guide to our real home in heaven. But she remains His Church. She belongs to Jesus Christ. The Church belongs to us only in the sense that we first belong to her as her children, not her masters or architects.
St. John Paul II, in his very first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis back in 1979, put it like this:
Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself; his life is senseless if love is not revealed to him; if he does not encounter love; if he does not experience it and make it his own; if he does not participate intimately in it. This [is] why Christ the Redeemer “fully reveals man to himself” ... This is the human dimension of the mystery of the Redemption. In this dimension [of sacrificial love] man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belong to his humanity (10).
Pope St. John Paul II wrote that through adoration of the Eucharist, “we can say not only that each of us receives Christ, but also that Christ receives each of us. He enters into friendship with us: ‘You are my friends.’”
In friendship, in the dialogue of Eucharistic adoration, God transforms us so that in love, we can make gifts of our ourselves to the world, just as Christ came to us as a babe in the womb of Mary, and then made a gift of himself in the Eucharist.
Pope St. John Paul II called Eucharistic adoration a “transforming force,” which transforms us, and transforms the world.
This is why the Eucharistic Revival is so vitally important. The Eucharist is the interpretive key to everything. Jesus is the “Divine Ophthalmologist.” He corrects our lenses, sharpens our vision, removes our blurriness, and clarifies all confusion. He allows us to see the reality of objective truth; the mutual dependence of faith and reason; the sanctity of life from the unborn child to the infirm and elderly; the nature of human rights and progress; the priority of mercy; the meaning of human freedom; the dignity of work; the need for economic justice; and the centrality of the Eucharist for a life in Christ.
I pray that this Christmas, as you take a few moments to kneel before the crib and gaze upon Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that in 2024, you will be inspired to spend more time before his “real presence” in Eucharistic Adoration.
May the peace, love and joy of the Christ-child be with you and your families this Christmas!
