What a disappointment it’s been, though unsurprising, to see Catholics offering negative commentary of this summer’s National Eucharistic Congress.
Now, I’m not an idealist. Some of the criticism can be warranted. Missteps have been made at the local and national levels, from things like insufficient reverence in Eucharistic praxis, to attendance at the Congress not reaching goals due to its high cost, to a discouraging commercialization affecting even Congress programming. But I firmly believe that deeper Eucharistic faith, more authentic Eucharistic worship and greater Eucharistic living is what the church and the world needs.
And now. We can quibble about how best to go about it, but greater emphasis on the Eucharist is nothing other than a win. That’s what made a recently voiced screed even more frustrating. Enter the regularly pessimistic columnist Jesuit Father Thomas Reese.
Not only did Reese’s recent column get the basics wrong about the National Eucharistic Revival, but he introduced theological dichotomies that do not exist in Catholic teaching. Reese, claiming that “the revival is more about Benediction than the Eucharist,” argues that Benediction itself — which is firmly established as an element of official Catholic worship — is not Trinitarian. “Benediction is all about worshipping Jesus,” he says.
Digging in further, Reese separated Benediction from Eucharistic worship — contrary to the church’s own teaching and ritual books — saying, “The Eucharist is about worshipping the Father and transforming the community into the Body of Christ.” Yes, the Eucharistic Revival has resulted in increased Eucharistic devotions. But no one has ever claimed it should end there. No worship ends there. But that’s Reese’s claim. “The revival focuses on individual rather than community. It focuses on me and Jesus rather than the communion of Christians,” he wrote.
What Reese didn’t explain, however, is that we can’t begin to dare to take up his alternative without a greater Eucharistic undertaking — namely that Christ may live in us.
Without Eucharistic worship — inside and outside Mass — our faith and mission are poorer. The claim that the revival “focuses on what happens to bread & wine rather than what happens to the community … on personal experience rather than mission” is to say that no one engaged in Eucharistic worship understands it or its goal. Belittling Eucharistic worship outside of Mass ends up belittling the Eucharist in toto. The Eucharist is not given to us for ourselves but for the life of the world. There is, therefore, an intrinsic link between the Eucharist and the church’s mission.
The dismissal at the end of the Mass — “Ite missa est,” as rendered in the Latin text of the Roman Missal — can be literally translated as “Go, having been sent.” We gather, we receive Christ, and we are sent to bring him to others. Or, as Christ commanded before he returned to his Father in heaven, after having been sent himself into the world for its salvation, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature” (Mk 16:15).
As Pope Benedict XVI explained, “A Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented” (Deus Caritas Est, No. 14). Cardinal Francis E. George, a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, once said, “the only thing we take with us when we die is what we have given away.”
Our call is no less than Christ’s: to give away all, our very selves, and bring it with us to present to him at our judgment. Eucharistic worship — in spirit and truth — is our school, our source, our goal. As our nation reels from division, and our church increasingly so, too, I can’t think of anything more needed than the selfless, all-embracing love of the Eucharistic Christ made present and given, received and emulated mysteriously through Eucharistic grace.
I pray that instead of trying to argue against what the church has taught and practiced from time immemorial, each of us can take up the task the entire revival has aimed to do from the beginning — to live and give Christ more fully.
Michael R. Heinlein is author of “Glorifying Christ: The Life of Cardinal Francis E. George, O.M.I.” and a promised member of the Association of Pauline Cooperators.
