As we recall the celebration of the Diocese of Wilmington Eucharistic Congress, the Dialog reaches out to Catholics who may want to share their witness to the Eucharist.
Dale Nickerson, a Bear resident and parishioner of St. Paul in Delaware City, offered his own personal Eucharistic witness and shared it with the Dialog and its readers.
Your offering of witness, should you choose to share, will be considered for publication at 500 words or less. Include your parish and daytime phone number.
Best to send your personal reflections to email jowens@thedialog.org.
Or mail to:
The Dialog
Editor Joseph P. Owens
1925 Delaware Ave
Wilmington, Del., 19806
Being raised by a single mother with two other siblings, I was baptized Methodist. Growing up, I was never part of a normal church lifestyle. Going into adulthood I lived a lifestyle of chaos and wildness. Reaching a point of knowing that this life had no future, I decided to leave it behind in Maryland and to start a new lifestyle for myself.
I bought my first home in New Castle. I met my next-door neighbor, a beautiful single mother of two children she was raising by herself. Our neighborly friendship turned into “I dos” at St. Peter’s altar in New Castle in 1987 when I received my first Catholic sacrament of matrimony.
Talk about love thy neighbor.
My wife and family were regular practicing Catholics, which I decided I wanted to be part of. Not being Catholic, I remember attending every Sunday Mass with two new, beautiful young children and wife. When it was time for everyone to go up to receive our Lord’s body and blood for Eucharist, I had stay behind in our pew, for I was not Catholic.
After years of being left behind in the pew, I decided I wanted to fully participate in the Catholic life. I entered the RCIA program with my wife as my sponsor, received all my sacraments and entered the Catholic church during the Easter Vigil.
I will never forget the first time I received my host during my first full Mass at St. Peters. Father Arthur Fiore greeted me and put the host in my hand. I looked up to him and he looked to be twenty feet tall. I think that was the first time our Lord’s Holy Spirit was present to me. At that moment, my life forever changed.
Now over 30 years later being the proud parent of three adult children, my wife and I are still practicing Catholic members of St. Paul’s in Delaware City. Every Sunday before Mass, I’ve told myself not to eat anything because I want the first thing into my body being our Lord’s body through the Eucharist.
It gives me so much joy and happiness to be part of our Catholic church’s celebration. Every Sunday right before I receive my host during Eucharist, I pray to our Lord and give him thanks for being able to receive his body and blood and to carry it with me every breath and step I take through my life.
