Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Eucharist

  • Fifteenth Sunday: Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens

    Fifteenth Sunday: Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens

    This was the alternate homily that I gave at 10:45 Mass, during which we accepted a young man into the Order of Catechumens.

     

    In the ancient Church, there were several so-called orders within the assembly.  The main group or order was, of course, the believers.  These had been baptized and had come to accept Jesus Christ, to live within the Church and celebrate the sacraments.  Other orders included the Order of Widows, those women whose husbands had died and had no supporting family members.  These women were taken care of by the community, and in turn served the community as they were able. Another order was the Order of Penitents.  These people had sinned publicly, usually through some violation of the sixth commandment, and were unable to partake of the sacramental life of the Church.  They usually confessed their sins, and were given a lengthy penance to accomplish, and then were reunited with the Church on Holy Thursday.
    The other order, which we still have today, is the Order of Catechumens.  These are unbaptized people who desired to become one with the Church and live the life of faith.  This is the order into which we accept Aaron today.  His search for Truth has led him here to us, and we have accepted him in our ritual.  This rite of acceptance into the Order of Catechumens is one that symbolizes a kind of first official step for Aaron.  He has been inquiring into the faith and now wishes to join us.  His formation will continue in the months to come, and he will be baptized, receive Confirmation and First Eucharist at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday night.  

    We are blessed to have Aaron with us today, because his presence indicates that our faith is alive and vibrant.  His presence shows us that God still searches for his people, calling them out of darkness into his own wonderful light.  As he continues to journey toward baptism, he will be with us in the assembly, being dismissed with candidates for Full Communion, until that day when they can all join us at the Table of the Eucharist.  

    We accept Aaron publicly today, not just for his benefit, but also for ours, and for two very specific reasons.  First, we as a community have a responsibility to bring the faith to all people until the day of the Lord’s return.  It’s not just the RCIA team and catechists, not just the priests and staff, but the entire community that makes this happen.  Our faith must be a witness to Aaron and to others that Christ is alive among us and longs to lead us all to salvation.

    Second, we have a need to grow in our own faith.  Every day, we come up against new obstacles, new darkness, and our faith must shine light into all of these situations.  We have a need to come to know our Lord Jesus in more intimate and meaningful ways.  And so Aaron isn’t journeying in faith alone here; we are all journeying and growing with him.

    Just like that seed that found its rootedness in the good soil, so too may our own faith, and Aaron’s, take root in the good soil of instruction and prayer and earnest longing for Christ.  May God’s Word go forth from us and never return to God void, but instead achieve the end for which he sent it, yielding a harvest of a hundred or sixty or even thirty fold.

  • Forty Hours Devotion: Closing Mass of Thanksgiving

    Forty Hours Devotion: Closing Mass of Thanksgiving

    Readings: Sirach 50:22-24; Mark 5:18-20 [display_podcast]

    Have you ever had an experience that was so wonderful you just never wanted it to end? Maybe you were on a vacation and the place where you spent your time was really beautiful, and you had all kinds of fun, you got to swim and do all sorts of really great activities, and your whole family had a really good time. Or maybe you were at a party and all your best friends were there, and the food was delicious, and there was great music and games. Or maybe you went to a movie that was the best you’ve ever seen: the jokes were funny and the story was great and the filming was top-notch. You can probably think of other examples, too, of experiences that were so wonderful.

    When we have these kinds of experiences, we don’t want them to ever come to an end, do we? We wish we could stay on vacation forever, or we want to have a party like that every week, or we wish we could stay and watch the movie over and over and over. The man in the gospel who had been cured of evil spirits had an experience sort of like that, only a billion times better!

    He had lived his whole life plagued by evil spirits. They got him into trouble, made him sick, got him injured, and probably made everyone around him think he was crazy and were afraid of him. His life had to be lonely because his behavior, instigated by those nasty demons, pushed people away. So just imagine what an incredible relief it had to be for him when Jesus came along, and with just a few words, cast the many demons that were in the man into a herd of swine, who ran over a cliff and drowned! The man was able to walk around and act normal, and be healed of all the sickness that was in him. Can you imagine how wonderful that was for him?

    Well, it was so wonderful, that in the Gospel reading we have today, he asks Jesus if he can stay with him forever. And that’s completely understandable because how would he ever want such a wonderful experience to end?

    We’ve come to the end now, of our Forty Hours Devotion. It has been a wonderful time of grace for all of us. We have had beautiful Masses and prayer services. You all got to spend time with Fr. Nathan and learn new ways to pray. We have had opportunities to come to Reconciliation and start our spiritual life all over again, new in the Spirit. We have had the opportunity to see the Lord and come into his presence in a very special way. This has been a beautiful time of prayer and there has been such an incredible spirit of quiet and reverence in the whole building. We have truly been so blessed to have these Forty Hours to pray together and to be with our Lord together. We wish, in lots of ways, that it would never end. We’d like to sit in our Lord’s presence forever.

    Except that’s not what our Lord wants for us. He loves it when we are here and spend time with him. But he doesn’t want us to sit here forever. He wants us instead to go back into our school, back into our workplaces, back into our families and our communities, and to be his presence to others.

    Because the Lord is with us in all sorts of ways. Of course, he is uniquely present to us in the Blessed Sacrament, in the Eucharist we adore which is the same Eucharist we receive at Mass. But he is also present to us in one another. And when we look at someone, we are called to see Christ in them in much the same way as we see Christ in the Eucharist. If we spend our time here looking at our Lord in Adoration and then go out of church and ignore his presence in other people, then we have wasted our time. Adoration teaches us to see our God. To see him present in the Eucharist, yes, but also to see him at work in our world and present in each person he puts in our lives. Even the people who irritate us beyond belief!

    And just as we respect and reverence Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, we absolutely have to respect and reverence Jesus present in each other. So now we have to treat each other with dignity and honor, and love them no matter what. And if we cannot see the good in someone, we have to pray to see Christ in them. Because there is nothing good in anyone than is better than Christ in them.

    This is a Mass of Thanksgiving. So as we offer our gifts today, we must also offer our thanks. We thank all of the committee who worked so hard to plan these hours, and to plan the prayer. We thank everyone who read at Masses or prayer services, everyone who sang or distributed the Eucharist, or put together worship aids or prayer books on the tables our back. We thank all those who stayed up late or got up early to adore the Lord. We thank those who were present all day long, and those who could only come for an hour. We thank those who could not come at all, but supported all of us with prayers.

    But most of all, we thank God. We thank God for being present to us in the Eucharist. We thank God for giving us the grace of these Forty Hours. We thank God who is nearer to us than our own hearts, and who never fails to show up when we call on him. We thank God who works great wonders everywhere: here and in our own hearts. And we thank God for all the blessings we’ve yet to see, the blessings he will give us as his presence continues to grow in our midst. Thank God!

  • Forty Hours Devotion: Solemn Vespers

    Forty Hours Devotion: Solemn Vespers

    Reading: Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24 [display_podcast]

    What is so wonderful, I think, about these Forty Hours is that we truly do have the wonderful ability to approach our God who is enthroned on Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and countless angels in festal gathering. That wonderful worship scene of which the writer of the letter to the Hebrews speaks this evening is where we are right here, right now. We won’t obviously be in it in all its fullness as we would like, until that great day when we are gathered to the Lord. But here in these Forty Hours, we have a little taste of that sacred space, which is the heavenly worship.

    I dream a little, sometimes, of being in that heavenly worship and what it might be like to have that heavenly worship here on earth. I think we’ve seen a little of that in these hours, and it is my prayer that the fruits of this time will continue to unfold in the days and weeks ahead. What if the peace of these hours could be rolled into our daily living? What if the calm of being before our Lord helped us to deal with the crises of our day, at work, at home, at school? What if our worship led us to a better understanding of who we are, and who God is, and what God wants for us? What if our meditation led us to a direct encounter with God’s call in our lives and moved us to embrace God’s will in new and life-changing ways. Those things happen all the time when we make adoration of the Blessed Sacrament part of our prayer.

    And the transition of worship to the practice of our lives is one we desperately need to make. Our worship and our prayer can’t be just words. It can’t even just be about sitting here before the Blessed Sacrament. Our worship has to have an effect on how we live our lives. Because yes, we worship Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Yes, we receive Christ in the Eucharist. But we are also called to be Christ to one another and to receive Christ in them. As we serve one another in gratitude, we are Christ for them. As we allow others to minister to us in our need, they are Christ to us. As we gather in faith, we become the presence of Christ for one another. As our service to the poor, needy, or afflicted radiates hope to those in need, we become the presence of Christ to others. As we love one another into a community of grace, we are Christ to a world that desperately needs God’s presence. The Christ in us is the same Christ in the Eucharist we receive and the Eucharist we adore. By worshipping and receiving the Eucharist, we become a divine presence in our world in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with our own efforts or worthiness, but is all about our Jesus.

    And probably you don’t feel worthy of that kind of unique calling. You may not in fact feel worthy of being the presence of Christ to others. And that’s because you’re not worthy. None of us is: not you, not me, not anyone. As we worship the Blessed Sacrament, as we receive our Lord in the Eucharist, we become filled up with his presence and our living of that call becomes all about letting God be God and letting his grace flow through our lives.

    We just sang in our response “May we who eat be bread for others. May we who drink pour out our love.” The age-old theology of the Eucharist is that we become what we receive – taking the body of Christ, we become the body of Christ. And our worship of the Lord in Adoration is an opportunity to reflect on that heavenly calling, an opportunity that beckons us to leave behind our false humility and instead be filled up with the grace that can make a tiny light of grace shine on the world grown dark in sin. And don’t sell it short. That tiny light of grace can provide a whole lot of illumination to a very dark place.

    As we continue to adore our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament as we observe these forty hours, may our worship unite us ever more as families, ever more as a community of faith, ever more as the Body of Christ we have been called and created to be. May we set aside our unworthiness to instead take up, with incredible humility, the grace so freely given to us in this Blessed Sacrament. May we become ever more aware of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and in one another. May we open ourselves to the challenge of reaching out to others in love as we contemplate the great Charity of Christ in this Saving Sacrifice. May we receive with gratitude the bountiful graces of our God in every moment of our lives.

  • The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

    The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

    Today's readings

    During World War II, the officers of the Third Reich's secret service forcefully recruited many 12- and 13-year-old boys into the Junior Gestapo. The harshly treated boys were given only inhumane jobs that they were to perform without rest or complaint.

    After the war ended, most had lost contact with their families and wandered aimlessly, without food or shelter. As part of an aid program to rebuild postwar Germany, many of these youths were housed in tent cities. There, doctors and nurses worked with them in an attempt to restore their physical, mental and emotional health.

    Many of the boys would awaken several times during the night screaming in terror. One doctor had an idea for handling their fears. After serving the boys a hearty meal, he'd tuck them into bed with a piece of bread in their hands that they were told to save until morning. The boys began to sleep soundly after that because, after so many years of hunger and uncertainty as to their next meal, they finally had the assurance of food for the next day.

    On the last day of my dad's life about a month ago, I gave him Holy Communion for what would be the last time. He was able to pray with us, and was so grateful to receive the Sacrament of Jesus' own body and blood. We call that last Communion Viaticum which in Latin means "bread for the journey." Like the former Junior Gestapo boys who slept soundly because they knew they had food for the next day, my dad was able to rest in Christ knowing that he would be able to eat at the heavenly banquet table.

    On this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, we are called to take comfort in the many ways God feeds us. We know that when we pray "give us this day our daily bread," we will receive all that we need and more, because our God loves us and cares for us. But to really trust in God's care can sometimes be a bit of a scary moment.

    It was certainly scary for the disciples, who asked Jesus to "dismiss the crowds" so that they could go into the surrounding cities and get something to eat. They were afraid for the crowds because they had come to the desert, where there was nothing to eat or drink. They were afraid for the crowds because it would soon be dark and then it would be dangerous to travel into the surrounding cities to find refuge and sustenance. And, if they were to really admit it, they were afraid of the crowds, because all they had to offer them were five loaves of bread and two fish – hardly a meal for the Twelve, let alone five thousand.

    loaves fishBut Jesus isn't having any of that. Fear is no match for God's mercy and care and providence, so instead of dismissing the crowds, he tells the disciples to gather the people in groups of about fifty. Then he takes the disciples meager offering, with every intent of supplying whatever it lacked. He blesses their offerings, transforming them from an impoverished snack to a rich, nourishing meal. He breaks the bread, enabling all those present to partake of it, and finally he gives that meal to the crowd, filling their hungering bodies and souls with all that they need and then some. Caught in a deserted place with darkness encroaching and practically nothing to offer in the way of food, Jesus overcomes every obstacle and feeds the crowd with abundance. It's no wonder they followed him to this out of the way place.

    The disciples had to be amazed at this turn of events, and perhaps it was an occasion for them of coming to know Jesus and his ministry in a deeper way. They were fed not just physically by this meal, but they were fed in faith as well. In this miraculous meal, they came to know that their Jesus could be depended on to keep them from danger and to transform the bleakest of moments into the most joyous of all festivals. But even as their faith moved to a deeper level, the challenge of that faith was cranked up a notch as well. "You give them something to eat," Jesus said to them. Having been fed physically and spiritually by their Master, they were now charged with feeding others in the very same way.

    Christ has come to supply every need. In Jesus, nothing is lacking and no one suffers want. All the Lord asks of the five thousand is what he also asks of us each Sunday: to gather as a sacred assembly, to unite in offering worship with Jesus who is our High Priest, to receive Holy Communion, and to go forth to share the remaining abundance of our feast with others who have yet to be fed. After the crowd had eaten the meal, that was the time for them to go out into the surrounding villages and farms – not to find something to eat, but to share with everyone they met the abundance that they had been given. So it is for us. After we are fed in the Eucharist, we must then necessarily go forth in peace to love and serve the Lord by sharing our own abundance with every person we meet.

    You might do that by participating in a small faith community, sharing the Scriptures and our own living faith with your brothers and sisters. Maybe you would do that by becoming Eucharistic Ministers, and dedicating yourselves to the ministry of distributing the precious gift of the Lord's own Body and Blood each Sunday. But you could also do that by volunteering to serve a meal at Hesed House, or bringing food to Loaves and Fishes. Sharing our abundance of spiritual blessing doesn't have to be very elaborate. You might just bring a meal to a friend going through a hard time or visit a neighbor who is a shut-in. Jesus is the font of every blessing, and it is up to us to share that blessing with everyone in every way we can. We too must hear and answer those challenging words of Jesus: "You give them something to eat."

    What we celebrate today is that our God is dependable and that we can rely on him for our needs. Just as he was dependable to feed the vast crowd in that horrible, out-of the-way place, so he too can reach out to us, no matter where we are on the journey, and feed us beyond our wildest imaginings. Just as the Junior Gestapo boys were able to rest easy as they clutched that bread for the next day, so we too can rest easy, depending on our God to give us all that we need to meet the challenges of tomorrow and beyond. The challenge to give others something to eat need not be frightening because we know that the source of the food is not our own limited offerings, but the great abundance of God himself. We need not fear any kind of hunger – our own or that of others – because it's ultimately not about us or what we can offer, but what God can do in and through us.

    In our Eucharist today, the quiet time after Communion is our time to gather up the wicker baskets of our abundance, to reflect on what God has given us and done for us and done with us. We who receive the great meal of his own Body and Blood must be resolved to give from those wicker baskets in our day-to-day life, feeding all those people God has given us in our lives. We do all this in remembrance of Christ, proclaiming the death of the Lord until he comes again.

  • 40 Hours: Thursday Evening Solemn Vespers

    40 Hours: Thursday Evening Solemn Vespers

    Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

    So I’m now in my early forties and when I was growing up, like a lot of people my age, I think, Eucharistic adoration wasn’t something that I encountered. In those days shortly after the Second Vatican Council, a whole lot of the old got thrown out to make way for the new. That was kind of like throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and it was never supposed to happen. Were there excesses and abuses tied in with some of the old traditions? Yes. But that never meant that everything old was supposed to go away. Instead, the intent of the Council was for everything old to be made new again. And so, in these days, we see a lot of people returning to the devotions that gave people a sense of the mystical and a glimpse of the beautiful and an intimate connection with God who is higher than the heavens, but also nearer than our own hearts. And the most beautiful of these devotions is the worship of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

    We’ve gathered here, then, to spend these forty hours in renewed devotion to the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. What has been beautiful for me to see is that this devotion has not been restricted to any particular age group, but has involved everyone from the youngest among us to our seniors. There have been groups of teens who got up early and came for prayer at three in the morning. Children in our school have been coming as a class throughout the day, and that will continue tomorrow. But probably the most touching to me was last night at the opening Mass, when so many families came together. They say the family that prays together stays together. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but I know that praying together gives families a common experience, and roots them in the communion of the Lord. Children who see a love in their parents that comes from their love of the Lord will certainly be able to look at others and love them in Christ. The family that worships the Blessed Sacrament together may be the family that makes it possible for others to see Christ in them.

    Because that’s exactly what this forty hours should be saying to us. Yes, we worship Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Yes, we receive Christ in the Eucharist. But yes, we are also called to be Christ to one another and to receive Christ in them. As we serve one another in gratitude, we are Christ for them. As we allow others to minister to us in our need, they are Christ to us. As we gather in faith, we become the presence of Christ for one another. As our service to the poor, needy, or afflicted radiates hope to those in need, we become the presence of Christ to others. As we love one another into a community of grace, we are Christ to a world that desperately needs God’s presence. The Christ in us is the same Christ in the Eucharist we receive and the Eucharist we adore. By worshipping and receiving the Eucharist, we become a divine presence in our world in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with our own efforts or worthiness, but is all about our Jesus.

    And we are all the Body of Christ in whatever way we have been called. This evening’s reading from St. Paul reminds us that we are not all the same, we do not all have the same gifts, we are not all in the same place on the journey of faith, but we are all absolutely part of the Body of Christ wherever we are and whatever our gifts may be. None of us can have the audacity to lord our gifts or talents over others, because they are just that – gifts – and we would not even have them if it were not for Jesus and his gift of the Holy Spirit. As we serve one another in Christ, we should be moved with humility by the way God works through us. Jane Ehrlich from our staff was telling me that they had some difficulty finding someone to play Jesus in our living stations this year, because people felt unworthy. And you know, they’re all absolutely right. None of us is worthy to play Jesus, but that’s okay, sometimes we are called to play Jesus anyway.

    You may find yourself called upon to witness to someone who doesn’t believe in God and feel totally unworthy of it. And of course, you are. But that’s okay, God will give you the words and the grace and you’ll be fine. I struggled with my vocation for a long time because I felt like I was unworthy of it, and I was absolutely right about that. I am completely unworthy of being a priest of Jesus Christ, but that didn’t change the fact that I was absolutely being called to be that priest, and it didn’t change the fact that everything I do as a priest is a result of God’s abundant graces that are poured out on me each day. We’re all in there somewhere. We are unworthy, but we’re called anyway, we are graced beyond anything we can accomplish and beyond anything we deserve, and we are all the Body of Christ.

    It is our experience of Christ in the Eucharist that makes this happen. Our worthiness comes from Christ himself, who is really present to us in the Eucharist each time we receive it, and each time we adore. In the Eucharist, Christ washes away our unworthiness to reveal the icon of Christ we were all created to be. There’s a prayer by St. Thomas Aquinas that I like to say when I prepare for Mass. It begins like this:

    Almighty and ever-living God,
    I approach the sacrament of your only-begotten Son,
    our Lord Jesus Christ.
    I come sick to the doctor of life,
    unclean to the fountain of mercy,
    blind to the radiance of eternal light,
    and poor and needy to the Lord of heaven and earth.
    Lord, in your great generosity,
    heal my sickness, was away my defilement,
    enlighten my blindness, enrich my poverty,
    and clothe my nakedness.

    As we continue to adore our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament as we observe these forty hours, may our worship unite us ever more as families, ever more as a community of faith, ever more as the Body of Christ we have been called and created to be. May we set aside our unworthiness to instead take up, with incredible humility, the grace so freely given to us in this Blessed Sacrament. May we become ever more aware of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and in one another. May we open ourselves to the challenge of reaching out to others in love as we contemplate the great Charity of Christ in this Saving Sacrifice. May we receive with gratitude the bountiful graces of our God in every moment of our lives.

  • Opening Mass for Forty Hours Devotion

    Opening Mass for Forty Hours Devotion

    Readings: Exodus 12:21-27 | 1 Peter 1:17-21 | Mark 14:12-16,22-26

    Brothers and sisters in Christ, it is truly an awesome privilege to be here tonight as we begin this Forty Hours Devotion. We are a people blessed and graced by our God with nothing less than the very Real Presence of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who has saved us from our sins and takes away the sting of our death by giving us the promise of eternal life. So it is with great joy that we look forward to these forty hours of Eucharistic adoration and worship, knowing not what graces we will receive individually and as a community during this time, but confident that those graces will be much more than we could ever hope for or imagine.

    This evening's Liturgy of the Word speaks to us very eloquently of the Eucharist in terms of God's saving work throughout time. Even back to the Israelite captivity in Egypt, God was looking out for his people, hearing the cry of their distress, and planning to save them in every way. These readings then speak of a people marked by their being elected as God's chosen people. The ancient Israelites were chosen to be saved from their captivity and we have been chosen to be saved from our sins. These readings also define us all as a people marked by faith, hope and love.

    In the first reading from Exodus, the people have not yet left Egypt. Moses is still trying to convince Pharaoh that he should let the people go out in to the desert to worship God, but Pharaoh is still stubbornly resisting, just as the Lord foretold. What we have in the reading, then, is the last of the plagues that will certainly cause Pharaoh not only to let the people go, but actually drive them from the land. That plague, of course, would be the death of all the first born of the land. But that death would not touch the first born of the Israelites, God said, if they would slaughter a lamb and sprinkle the doorposts with the blood. Then the houses would be marked as those of the Israelites, and the destroyer would not enter. This Passover sacrifice certainly marked the people for safety, but it also marked them in faith. They were given a ritual that would last for generations, one they still celebrate, in which they would recall this great saving act and pass that faith on to their young people.

    In the second reading from the first letter of St. Peter, we are reminded that our redemption from sin and death was not just purchased with something perishable, but with the precious Blood of Christ. Because of that, we are to conduct ourselves as a ransomed people, as a people marked by hope – by a hope beyond all hopes, by a hope that was purchased at great price, by a hope that will never disappoint or pass away.

    The Gospel shows Jesus giving this glorious, miraculous mystery to his apostles. "This is my Body … this is my Blood." We make that reality present every time we celebrate the Eucharist, in grateful remembrance of the Lord's sacrifice for our redemption. This beautiful feast of the most precious food marked the apostles, and all those who would be touched by their ministry and preaching, with the love of God beyond all telling.

    Our God is higher than the heavens, more awesome than any of the world's mysteries, but our God also continues to be in our midst, continuing his work among us, continuing to gift us with salvation, continuing to bring us back to himself. We do not worship a god who has set the world in motion and then retired to view our history from afar. We believe in a God who is intimately involved in our lives and our history so that we can never fall so far from him that he cannot reach us. We believe in God who has sent his Son Jesus Christ into our world, to walk among us, to share our sorrows and feel our pains, to die our death and show us the way back to the Father. Christ is really present here among us as we gather, here among us as we hear the Word proclaimed, here among us as we receive the ministry of the Church, and here among us as we partake of the Eucharist, the great sacramental meal that he gave us as an everlasting remembrance. Because Christ is really present among us, we are a people who have been marked by faith, hope and love. We have received the grace of God's saving action throughout history and have been redeemed at a great cost.

    We gather here then, for forty hours, to celebrate the nearness of our God and to worship Jesus Christ, really present here among us. We gather for forty hours because the number forty has always signified a sacred period of time: the rains during the time of Noah lasted 40 days and nights; the Jews wandered through the desert for 40 years, our Lord fasted and prayed for 40 days before beginning His public ministry. The 40 Hours Devotion remembers that traditional "forty-hour period" from our Lord's burial until the resurrection. In the Middle Ages, the Blessed Sacrament was transferred to the repository, "the Easter Sepulcher," for this 40 hour period of time to signify our Lord's time in the tomb.

    This Blessed Sacrament that we worship in these 40 hours is the same Christ we will receive in the Eucharist this evening – and every time we gather for Mass. And that Christ we receive in the Eucharist is the same Christ we serve in our brothers and sisters. Our Catholic experience of Jesus Christ is never just "me and Jesus." Our personal relationship with Christ is important, but it is always defined by our communal experience. So these forty hours may challenge us to reach out to others in ways we have resisted in the past, because the more we see Christ as we worship, the more we'll see Christ in our daily lives.

    What we celebrate in these days is that Christ is present to us in all of these ways every single day of our lives. We are looking for these forty hours to remind us of that great gift. Having celebrated St. Patrick's feast so recently, I am reminded that his Breastplate hymn sings of this wondrous presence so richly:

    Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
    Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
    Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
    Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
    Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
    Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
    Christ in every eye that sees me,
    Christ in every ear that hears me.

    May this forty hour retreat of adoration and worship of the Blessed Sacrament remind us that we are all caught up in the faith, hope and love that is ours in Christ. May we all in this time become ever more aware that our Christ is really present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, every time we gather in faith for the Eucharist, every time we worship the great hope present in the Blessed Sacrament, and every time we reach out in love to our brothers and sisters.