[Music] Hello, I'm Jeff Carlz, and this is the Institute on Religious Life's podcast, "Ever Ancient, Ever New". On today's episode, we will be featuring a talk from our 2023 national meeting by Sister Alicia Torres of the Franciscans of the Eucharist of Chicago. She works at the mission of Our Lady of the Angels on Chicago's West Side and serves as Vocations Director for her religious community. The mission of Our Lady of the Angels was founded by Bishop Bob Lombardo, who also currently serves as the Executive Vice President of the IRL Board of Directors. Bishop Bob also serves as a Superior of the Franciscans of the Eucharist of Chicago. Sister Alicia studied theology at Loyola University in Chicago and earned a Master of Divinity at Mundoline Seminary and a Master of Arts in Teaching from Dominican University in River Forest. Sister Alicia won the Food Network's Chopped in 2015 and has contributed to articles to several online and print media outlets, including First Things, Catholic News Service and America Magazine. Since July 2021, she served on the executive team for the USCCB's National Eucharistic Revival. Her talk today is titled "Living a Eucharistic Life, a Focus on Sacrifice". Thank you for listening and may God bless you. What's really a blessing to be with all of you today, thank you to Jeff and the IRL for the invitation. I see Father Nelson is here as well, so thank you so much for your hospitality. And it's also just a real delight to have so many of my own sisters here, the Franciscans of the Eucharist, so it's a really blessing to have them here, so give them a round of applause. They're awesome. And, you know, we're here today because our bishops have discerned and invited the entire church in our country to enter into a time of Eucharistic Revival. But we know that our revival is not the work of human beings, but rather it's the work of God, right? It's the work of the Holy Spirit, and so we're praying that the Holy Spirit would revive our Eucharistic faith and devotion in our country. And so how do we open our hearts to that invitation, particularly in consecrated life, in the religious life? There's a lot of things to reflect on, and we could be reflecting and discussing on this until the end of our lives, right? There's infinite things we could reflect on about the Eucharist, and so I'm delighted to reflect with you this afternoon on the idea of living a Eucharistic life, particularly with this dynamic of sacrifice, presence, and communion. So that's what I'd hope to do this afternoon with you, and we'll see what happens. There's a lot of slides, so don't worry. I'll stop after an hour. And I know you probably have all of your blood in your stomach digesting your lunch, so you're probably a little sleepy, so if you're not off, I will not be, how do you say, offended. I teach five-year-olds, and they tell me what they think about me all the time. But let's just start with a short prayer, and to do that, I just want to start with a short passage from John's Gospel, which we're all very familiar with. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Come, Lord Jesus, open our minds and our hearts, help us to recognize your presence among us. For you said we're two or three are gathered, and my name, I am there in their midst, so we welcome you, Lord Jesus, and we thank you for welcoming us. Help our hearts to remain open, all the days of our lives, to your grace and your mercy. Help us to understand the gift of our vocations, and how we can share the treasure of our Eucharistic faith with the church, particularly at this time. And this is a reading from John's Gospel. Jesus said, I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-dresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already made clean by the word that I have spoken to you, abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine. Neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he it is the bear's much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. He who abides in me and I in him, he it is the bear's much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. Where Jesus we ask you to help us, to stay with you, to abide with you, as you abide with us, especially in the Holy Eucharist. Thank you for this time. Please allow it to bear fruit for the kingdom. We make this prayer in your holy name, Amen. Amen with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. So I wanted to share this image, which is most likely familiar to everyone. It's an image of St. Francis of Assisi during the moment when he experienced this serif and he received the stigmata. So we have documentation historically that St. Francis of Assisi is one of the saints that received the stigmata, which are the wounds of our Lord. And in our Franciscan community with Bishop Lombardo, he often will talk about that as God's stamp of approval upon St. Francis. That St. Francis lived such a Christocentric life that he allowed himself to be more and more transformed by his relationship with Jesus, that he identified with Jesus in this profound way in his suffering and his self gift. And many people when they hear St. Francis of Assisi will have a word association with a garden statue, right? A lot of people think St. Francis is the person that we look to when we talk about and think about care of creation. And certainly St. Francis loved all of God's creation. But many people popularly have no idea that St. Francis was a profoundly Eucharistic saint. As a matter of fact, he advanced to the reforms of Latin for all over the church at that time, which had to do with caring for the things of the Mass and exhorting the priests to take their profound dignity seriously when it came to the celebration of the sacraments, particularly the Holy Eucharist. And so for us, we feel really privileged to have the name Franciscans of the Eucharist of Chicago because it reminds us not only of our carerism, our founder, our history, but that all of us as followers of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church are called to live Eucharistic lives. And so what are ways that we can imagine and think about that and allow the Lord to transform us because it's really his work and it's not what we do, but rather how our hearts open to what the Lord does. So just briefly, in case it hasn't been stated today, or just as a reminder, like Jeff noted, I'm on the executive team for the National Eucharist of Revival, so I've had the blessing to serve on that team, primarily lay men and women, a couple of other religious and priests were on the country, and our work is really to make the vision of the bishops happen. So over these last two years, there have been a lot of advances on the front of the revival, and I'll have a whole team that's getting ready for the National Eucharistic Congress next summer in Indianapolis. And so I'm still on this national team, and my main work right now is helping to serve as the editor for our weekly e-newsletter, which I'll share that with you a little bit later on, but that's our main external communication to cultivate the grassroots of the Eucharistic revival. So this is a movement inspired by the Holy Spirit that our bishops have invited us into to really renew the church through in kindling a living relationship with Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and the vision of it is to inspire a movement of Catholics who have been transformed, healed, converted, and unified through their encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist and then sent out on mission for the life of the world. And so I hope that none of us here and no one in our country thinks that the purpose of this revival is withheld within the framework of three years, which are what have been planned. The hope is that those three years are the launch pad for years to come of Eucharistic renewal and revival in our country, and when the bishops say grassroots, they mean that sincerely. This is not a top-down program. This is not do this in your diocese, pay by number step by step. This is an invitation to discern how was the Holy Spirit inviting us in our local churches, in our communities, in our apostolates to live Eucharistic revival. And so it's not a being told but a being invited into a work of God, which is really important to note. And then how is this movement different than so many other movements that are of no and important, even throughout human history? It's really because of Jesus in the Eucharist. Like Pope Francis said in Desiderio, a vague memory of the Last Supper would do no good. We need to be present at that supper and to be able to hear his voice, to eat his body, and drink his blood. We need him. And so something profound about this movement that makes it so special is that it transcends from time into eternity. That's what happens at every mass. And so when we think about a Eucharistic revival and renewal and this sense of Eucharistic amazement, like this is something that carries us into heaven, unlike any other movement that we can invest ourselves in. And that's why it's so profound and such an invitation to really dispose our hearts to receive. So what does it mean to live a Eucharistic life? I was challenged by one of our sisters to really clearly define this. So I prayed about it and I hope that this helps. And the scripture that came to me was from John, one of the most challenging things that Jesus said to us before he died. I give you a new commandment, love one another as I have loved you. And we all know that the way that Jesus loved us was a profoundly self-pouring out kind of love. So a Eucharistic life is a life patterned after our Lord which all of us are already living Eucharistic lives. If we are baptized and if we're taking it seriously, our life is by nature Eucharistic because it's a life patterned after the life of Jesus who gave us this commandment and invites us to share in this way of love where we slowly allow him to transform our attentiveness away from ourselves and out to the other, not to deny, not to reject, not to not care for ourselves, but to have an other centred approach to life, right? And that's how Jesus himself lived. And so it's a self-sacrificing, like agape, like I'm pouring myself out for you kind of love that identifies Jesus and that's the kind of love that he invites us into. So it's a very unique way we experience this dynamic of Jesus' self-gift in the mass and we encounter him through his movement of sacrifice, presence and communion. And so those are the three words that I want to invite you to remember from this time this afternoon. I've found them really helpful for me in my own personal prayer and trying to help invite others into the Eucharistic revival, particularly because these three words in this movement of Jesus is from and originates in the Paschal mystery and then it is relived at every mass and we ourselves can enter into this dynamic. So this is from Ecclesia to Eucharistia from Saint John Paul II and I just want to read the whole passage for you. For claiming the death of the Lord until he comes and tells that all who take part in the Eucharist be committed to changing their lives, making them in a certain way completely Eucharistic. It is this fruit of a transfigured existence and a commitment to transforming the world into accordance with the gospel which splendidly illustrates the eschatological tension inherent in the celebration of the Eucharist and in the Christian life as a whole. Maranatha, right? Come Lord Jesus. And so we know that at mass, time and eternity, they kiss each other, they meet, and we're in this moment of celebrating with all of the community of saints in this divine worship of our Lord. And that's what we're moving toward is this perfect communion in heaven. And so as religious, our documents talk about how we have an exchatological dimension to our vocations that as celibates, as consecrated men and women, we're living already here. What everyone will live in the kingdom where we will not be given or received in marriage, right? And so we are an eschatological sign to what the heavenly reality will be which we cannot yet fully understand. Of course, I definitely don't. So what are some theological dimensions or foundations for living a Eucharistic life? So these are all things that we've all studied and reflected on in our formation and our Christian education over the years. The doctrine of the Imago Day that we are made in the image and likeness of God, the reality of the incarnation that the second person of the Trinity took on human flesh, our human nature to redeem us. The Paschal mystery, the reality of the passion, death, resurrection and ascension of our Lord. And that last point, the ascension of our Lord is really important. A lot of times when people recount the Paschal mystery, they leave the ascension out. But that's really critical if we believe that the human body is a gift from God and that we will experience the resurrection of the dead, just like Jesus himself did rise. And then, of course, baptism, which is the gateway sacrament into the life of the church into Jesus' life, the Eucharist, which we understand both as a celebration of the Mass and the blessed sacrament. So there is not an inherent tension there, but rather our theology helps us to understand the Mass as a source and somewhat of our faith from which flows our Eucharistic devotion, our life of prayer, and then our Eucharistic devotion, our life of prayer, our adoration, our processions, all of those beautiful things that we do to show reverence to our Lord and grow an intimacy with Him lead us back to the Mass. So there's not a distinction or a conflict between the celebration of the Mass and devotion of the blessed sacrament outside of Mass. And then, I think often we forget it, but confirmation is a sacrament that strengthens us to spread and defend our faith. So that's very, very important to keep in mind when we think about living a Eucharistic life. I think that a simple way to understand this is it's really a lens through which to understand our inherent baptismal vocation. When we're baptized, it's not just like, hey, you get to be part of God's family, isn't this nice? You're like, no, you need to go out and participate in the mission of Christ, which is the salvation of souls. You know, like, this is a really big deal. Do we believe this? Are we willing to give our lives for it? If you're consecrated, you already have. How is Jesus inviting you to enter more deeply into it? If you're baptized, you already have. How can you give of yourself more freely? What holds us back from making a gift of ourselves and how can Jesus help side us free if we allow him? He always is offering that freedom, but it's our hearts that struggle to receive it. And our religious consecration, and that doesn't exclude the ordination of our priests, our deacons, or the sacrament of marriage. Our vocations by the nature of our states and life help to set a direction for how we live a Eucharistic life. My faithfully living as a consecrated man or woman, and my faith living as a priest or deacon, a married person, or my faith living a single life in the church, all of those things matter. So as we come to understand more who we are, deep down that frees us to live this life with Christ through this Eucharistic lens. So Eucharistic living and sacrifice. So I want to do is look at these three words, sacrifice, presence, and communion. I have a short excerpt from the bishop's document, mystery of the Eucharist and the life of the church, which was approved in 2020 November. And that's in a sense the foundational theological document for what the bishops have been offering to the church over the last couple of years, the year leading up to the year of diocesan revival, which we're in now and flowing into the parish year and then the mission year. It's a really beautiful document, I've read it many times, I've been working with it a lot and I encourage you to look at it if you haven't had the chance yet. But we'll look at something from the bishop's document because that's what's at the heart of the movement that they've invited us into. And then I have some excerpts from Pope John Paul II's Eucharistia and then Pope Benedict's sacramentum caritatis. It's a beautiful, magisterial teachings on the Eucharist for us, but to kind of enter into those, which is a short reflection, to connect us with these ideas. So this is a famous depiction of Jesus on the cross, it's very beautiful. Jesus' perfect sacrifice is represented or made present for us. We experience the Paschal mystery at every mass, like Jesus we are missioned through our baptism to make a gift of ourselves, which means often small and great daily sacrifices for love of God and neighbor, but we don't do it alone. Uniting our sacrifices to the final sacrifice of Jesus, we participate in His redemptive work. We can bring our sacrifices and lay them at the altar during the Offatory with Jesus. This sacrificial living flows from and leads back to every mass. So it's a profound opportunity for us as we grow in our awareness of how we pray the mass, how do we fully actively and consciously participate in mass. It's a heart thing primarily, it's not primarily being a lecture or being a Eucharistic minister. Those are secondary things, but how is my heart engaged and disposed to praying the mass in the community with the priest who's offering the mass? And so at every Offatory, every mass, we can lay our sacrifices down at the foot of the altar, just like Jesus lays Himself down in sacrifice for us. We unite ourselves to Him, and that's the heart of uniting ourselves to Jesus in this dimension of sacrifice. So just a few different excerpts from these beautiful magisterial teachings. I just put this note on the top so I don't forget where we're at in the presentation, so it'll help you as well, so we're in the sacrifice part. This is from Pope Dom Paul II. "The Eucharist makes present the one sacrifice of Christ our Savior." And then he says, "The church constantly draws her life from this redeeming sacrifice. She approaches it not only through faith-filled remembrance, but also through a real contact. Since this sacrifice has made presence ever anew, sacramentally perpetuated in every community which offers it at the hands of the consecrated minister." So we are truly entering into the sacrifice of Christ. Here's Pope Benedict. I won't read everything on every slide, but I highlighted what I thought were the most important parts. So Christ's death on the cross is the culmination of that turning of God against Himself. This is one of the most radical statements I've ever seen in Catholic theology, by the way. God turning against Himself in which He gives Himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form. That is profound. I don't think I could ever fully understand that phrase. God turning against Himself. And how hard is it for us in our everyday life to simply lay down ourself will and our first impression? Or, gosh, I really don't want to clean that toilet one more time. And here's God turning against Himself for love of us to save us. And so our sacrifices can become, how do you say? They can make more sense when we look at what Jesus has done for us. And perhaps it cannot feel as daunting for us when we realize that this really isn't the end of the world. You know that we can really participate in these big and little sacrifices that are asked of us in our everyday life. So Jesus is the true Paschal Lamb who freely gave Himself in sacrifice for us and thus brought about the new and eternal covenant. The Eucharist contains this radical newness which is offered to us again at every celebration. That's really profound. That's a very important point to Pope Benedict that this is a radically new and ever new thing. It doesn't get old. What does that mean for us as leaders in our church when so few people experience the mass is new, when so many people find it boring and tires them to the point where after the pandemic the current number is 13% of Catholics go to mass on any given Sunday. About 7% less than before the pandemic. It's pretty sad, right? But how can we see it through the lens of opportunity instead of discouragement? How do our carisms and our apostolates already offer opportunities to draw people back to the reality of the newness of this sacrifice? And perhaps it's how we let Jesus be alive in us and the small s and the big s sacrifices we make every day that will dispose people. Hmm, there's something different about them. Why is it that they smile when they do something that's so unpleasant? Oh, they go to mass every day. That's interesting. It's the same thing every day, but then it's new. Sacrifice. Responding to the gift, do this in memory of me. In these words the Lord expresses, as it were, His expectation that the church born of this sacrifice will receive this gift developing under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the liturgical form of the sacrament. So we know from our city of church history that the mass, as we have it today, didn't look like that the night of Last Supper. It's certainly not in the early church. So we have the deposit of faith. What we believe about the sacraments has not changed, but our understanding has deepened and developed through the guidance and the wisdom of Holy Mother Church. But Jesus has a profound expectation that to the end of time, because He loves us so much, He wants us to do this in memory of Him. We desperately need the priesthood, or we could have no sacraments, certainly no Eucharist. And the priesthood needs the Eucharist to know who it is that the priest is and the person of Jesus Christ. And don't consecrate in men and women need the intimacy of the Eucharist to persevere through the ups and downs of our vocations where we can struggle with loneliness, where we can struggle with our insufficiencies and our inadequacies, or even long for human companionship that we have pronounced for the sake of Christ. How do we bring those sufferings and those human experiences to God and not repress them, but be honest with them? The radical newness of Christian worship. More than just statically receiving the incarnate logos, we enter into the very dynamic of His self-giving. So Benedict is really making this point about the substantial change of the bread and wine reads. We believe our theology teaches us that at the substance level, this accidents of bread and wine remain, but this has been transformed. No longer is it bread and wine, but it's truly the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. But think about the spousal dimension of every Christian life through baptism and particularly consecrated life. There is a giving and a receiving that happens through the Eucharist that is profound. He even uses the term penetrates, penetrates to the heart of all being. It's not a physical presence of Jesus, but a true sacramental presence. It's mysterious, but it's real. And this will transfigure the entire world. Remember Jesus said at one point before Calvary, "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all creation to myself." And weren't we entrusted in the Garden of Eden to be stewards of creation? Isn't the human person meant to help cultivate and sustain God's beautiful world and say yes to God? So that we can experience the fullness of redemption at the Second Coming. So the Eucharist and our own self-offering. This is an excerpt from Introduction to Christianity, one of my favorite things I've ever read about this idea of sacrifice. Worship follows in Christianity first of all, in thankful acceptance of the Divine deed of salvation. The essential form of Christian worship is therefore rightly called Eucharistia, thanksgiving. Christian sacrifice does not consist in a giving of what God would not have without us, but in our becoming totally receptive and letting ourselves be completely taken over by Him. Letting God act on us. That is Christian sacrifice. Letting God act on us. That is Christian sacrifice. My friends, it is not about a pious self-help program or how am I going to change me. It's about how am I going to let Jesus transform, heal, convert me. This is where we come up against the wall all the time. I do, I would imagine some of you do at least. I think, oh man, I can just be so impatient. I can fix that. I'm so self-reliant. I don't remember that Jesus is always there and that He always wants to help me and that I don't have to do it alone. That's why the relationship is so critical. And God is, in a sense, a divine gentleman. He's not going to perform heart surgery without some anesthetics. I feel heart, right? But He'll give us a little bit of pain relief in the process. And that's the path to freedom as letting the Lord enter in deeply where He wants to go and transform the places of our hearts and our souls that are in deep need of His love and His mercy. And many of the things we deal with were dealt to us. But how do we allow God to accompany us in the process of transformation? Eucharistic living and presence. Jesus is truly present yet mysteriously in the Eucharist, allowing ourselves to be present to Him. You know, He abides in us, we abide in Him. Deepens our intimacy, our friendship, and bond with Him. It is very hard to be present, yet it's a noble work. If anyone's worked with young children or perhaps elderly or you have your own children or grandchildren, you know that sometimes you just do not want to listen to that other person, especially when they're asking you to do something for the five hundredth time, right? And so how do I remain present to that little person, that big person, that annoying person? Well, if I can't even see Jesus in myself, I don't know how I'm ever going to see Jesus in anyone else's first of all. So where is the condemnation point of my own self? What are the ways that I'm looking at myself not as a beloved daughter or son of God? How can He let Jesus be present to me in those places so that I can start to see others through His eyes and not my own? As we go on our ability to be present to Jesus, as He's present to us, especially through the Eucharist, we can be more present to ourselves and to our neighbor. Truly present, as Jesus is truly present to us. Not only through my to-do list or my argument for rebuttal to whatever the annoying person is saying to me or checking my cell phone, but really, deeply, lovingly be present to the other. And that leads us right back to Mass. Many people say, "I can pray at home by myself. I'm spiritual, but not religious." This is not an individual self-help project, right? We have to be part of the community of believers. We have to gather in the assembly. We have to be part of the whole body of Christ to offer the worship that's right in just to the Father through Jesus. So His real presence, this is from a mystery of the Eucharist. I don't know where the other one went, so I'm sorry about that. The Eucharist with the eyes of faith we see before us, Jesus Christ, who in the incarnation became flesh, and who in the Paschal mystery gave Himself for us, accepting even death on the cross. St. John Chrysostom preached that when you see the body of Christ set before you on the altar, say to yourself, "Because of this body, I am no longer earth and ashes, no longer a prisoner but free. Because of this, I hope for heaven, and to receive the good things therein immortal life, the portion of angels, and closeness with Christ." From Pope Benedict, the Church's faith is essentially a Eucharistic faith, and it is especially nourished at the table of the Eucharist. Faith in this acriments are two complimentary aspects of ecclesial life. Faith is expressed in the right while the right reinforces and strengthens the faith. Every great reform in the life of the Church, the history of the Church, has in some way began linked to the rediscovery of belief in the Lord's Eucharistic presence among His people. This is a very important point, and I think that it's in its own sense, at least with a small p prophetic of what's happening right here in our own country right now. That every true reform, which is a work of God, in the history of the Church has began with a rediscovery of belief of the Eucharistic presence of the Lord. And also in G.P. II's letter, he talks about how the Eucharist has been present to us throughout all of history, just imagine from the very first moment during the last supper to this very day, almost, or perhaps 2,000 years, celebrating the sacrifice and entering into communion with God through the Holy Eucharist. And some of you might be familiar with how Saint John Paul II really set this program for the 21st century that we were to contemplate the Feast of Christ, and he said, "In the School of Mary, to contemplate Christ involves being able to recognize Him wherever He manifests Himself in His many forms of presence but above all, and the living sacrament of His body and blood. The Church draws her life from Christ in the Eucharist. By Him, she is fed, and by Him, she is enlightened. The Eucharist is both a mystery of faith and a mystery of light." Also, you know, when we talk about the Mass in the presence of our Lord, we gravitate towards the Blessed Sacrament, and that makes perfect sense, but the Lord is present to us, the Church teaches in four ways at Mass, and let's not forget about the Word of God. How can we allow that part of the Mass to prepare our hearts to encounter Jesus in the Eucharist? How can we encourage and help our priests to recognize the homily as the bridge to help make the Scriptures real for us in our day and age, and help our hearts be set on fire, just like the road to Emmaus' experience for those two disciples when Jesus encountered them and opened the Scriptures for them, and they recognize Him in the breaking of the bread? And then, you know, all throughout our recent Magisterium of Popes, there's been a great emphasis on Eucharistic adoration. The opportunity, I think, for us in the Eucharistic Revival is to help regain the connection between the liturgy and devotional life. They're not distinct from one another; they're not in competition. So how can we creatively find ways to help people discover how our worship of the sacrament outside of Mass leads us right back to the Mass? I also just really appreciate it, help put Benedict noted that the place of the Tavernacle in the Church is very important, and I think we can celebrate that in many of our diocese is. The Tavernacle is getting moved back into the center into a primary place. I think that's a great victory for our Eucharistic faith in our country. And then, you know, John Paul, I mean, he just couldn't say enough about the Eucharist, but he talked about it as the most special presence, the most precious treasure. I mean, like, take that phrase to a holy hour, borrowing from Bishop Barron, "most precious treasure." And there's always been, I think, a healthy balance in our Church of understanding what it means to worship the Eucharist outside of Mass. Again, that all these things flow from and lead us back to the Mass. So, our community's primary apostolate is with the poor. We work on the west side of Chicago, but we also have an apostolate of teaching in poor Catholic schools' religion, as well as evangelization through retreat work and various other initiatives. So, there's many beautiful things that we do to participate in the mission of the Church. I am blessed, as already noted, to teach small children, so I teach K through 4 religion twice a week at a small inner city Catholic school. And I love it there very much. Now, I don't know about any of you. I don't know if I am a perfectionist still or a recovering perfectionist, but I really struggle with perfectionism. And I don't like it when my plans are disrupted. And I especially don't like it when my lesson plans are disrupted, right? So, it's so hard. Anyways, so, about three weeks into this school year, we were notified the morning of that we had some new students coming to our school, two little boys, and one was in first grade and one was in third grade. So, that means that they're both going to be new students to me as well. I didn't know anything about these children except for their names and that they were siblings. But it did not take very long. Unfortunately, in this circumstance, religion is the first class for third grade, which was definitely not the best way for this little boy to have his first hour in school because he didn't even get to get into the routine of his home room. But it didn't take very long to notice that it was something distinctively different about this child. And not only different, but also disruptive. And I just thought to myself, you know, there must be some exceptionality, but there's no IEP. I have no idea what's going to happen here. And so, I go down to the principal's office and, like, many of our smaller, under-resourced Catholic schools. They're like, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's on the autistic spectrum. Yeah, good luck." They didn't say good luck, but that's how it followed, right? So, what do I do with this little boy? And how do I learn how to teach him? And so, unfortunately, instead of seeing this child as a person to love, I started to have a hardness in my heart and see him as a distraction and a problem in my classroom. Thankfully, after about three or four weeks of that build-up, I recognized the frustration in myself towards this little child. And it was a great moment of examination for me. It's like, how is it that a nine-year-old boy could cause me so much anger and frustration? And it was about me. It wasn't about the child, right? It was about me. And so, as I took that to prayer and I reflected on my attitudes and my behavior toward the child and what was the Lord inviting me into, I realized that all I needed to do was let Jesus help me to love this little boy. And that meant that I had to make a sacrifice of my own instinct and of my own plan for what the school year was going to be and how third grade was going to go. So, I paid about it and I really asked for help. And I started to sense the hardness kind of softened in my heart and some semblance of an authentic love start to grow for this child. So, the next experience in the classroom, to me, was just really profound, although very simple. The children are working in their table groups on a little map. We're working on the kingdom of God. And so, to do that, they were imagining what a kingdom could look like and what would their flag be. So, their job at that moment was to design the flag for their kingdom. So, everything seemed to be going really well. I found a group that this little boy could work in where there were children that he often works with. And it seemed like it was wonderful. Everybody was happy. So, I turned around to check my computer for the lesson plan to see what was the end of the lesson because with five different lessons, I can't memorize the end of every lesson for every day. And then all of a sudden, I hear a scream. I'm like, "Oh no!" And I turn around. And it's the little boy. And he's just screaming and he's starting to cry and he's incredibly distressed. So, I came over to the table. The other children were kind of shocked. You could tell nobody had done anything intentionally to upset the little boy. At the table, it was also one of my other favorite third graders, although I'd probably say they were all my favorite. But this little boy, he's one where you say, "So and so, could you please stop talking?" And all of a sudden, he's like, "Yeah." And all of a sudden, he's like, "Sorry, sister. Sorry, sister. Sorry, sister." Okay, so this is kind of like him, right? So he's also at the table. So probably two of the biggest personalities are at the same table right now. And I came over to the table and I said, "What's upsetting you? What has happened?" And this little boy starts crying and crying and he's starting to speak out loud and myself and the other four children at the table can hear him. And he says, "I was at home and I was using my crayons and I was drawing my picture and my mom just started screaming at me and she was so angry." And what I understood by what he was relating through the sobs was that whatever happened with that little flag and their colored pencils brought up some memory of something very painful that happened at home with his mother and triggered that memory. And it was clearly a deep wound because he's a nine-year-old boy and he's crying. Never seen him cry before in my classroom. So what next happened was so beautiful. All the children were so reverent and my little boy that always says, "Sorry, sister, just came over and gave him a big hug." And there's just such a beautiful piece that came over the classroom. You know, when they finished the project, they laughed. And as I reflected on the experience, I recognized that movement there. But it had to start with the grown-up, right? You can't expect children to lead a classroom environment. And as the grown-up, you have to decide if Jesus is going to be the lead in your classroom and if you're going to allow yourself to follow his lead. And so because I was willing enough to sacrifice my attitude about this child, it opened up this new possibility for presence in our classroom that led to this encounter of communion for myself and for these children. And I think that things like that happen every day for us, whether it's in the apostolate or in the intimacy of our religious houses or in our families. These moments where we have to decide, am I going to do what I want to do or am I going to do what the Lord is inviting me to do? Am I going to be present to these people or present to my attitudes and dispositions that moved me away from the presence? And will I allow myself to be in communion with the people in front of me or do I only want communion with how I imagine people should be? And that's a great reflection, a great examination for me. And it's helped me to open up to racism, more healing and conversion in my own religious life. And I hope that it's somehow helpful for all of you here because in as much as we allow ourselves to be in communion with Jesus as one another, that communion strengthens our Christian witness. Remember in John 17, Jesus said that they will know Him and as much as we testify to Him through our communion with one another. So just wrapping up, I wanted to make you aware of some of the resources that the Euchistic Revival has. There's a really beautiful website that's been developing over the last year and a half or so. And then our newsletter as well, which I'm responsible for the newsletter with a wonderful team of primarily religious men and women and a couple of lead people as well. But the newsletter, all of the content on the blog, which currently the internet might be down, is the responsibility of the newsletter. So I can't show that to you now, but we do have what we call our Eucharistic prayer companions that we put out for every Sunday of the year. And the idea or the philosophy behind those is that we invite people to pray with the upcoming scriptures from the Sunday Mass to help them make connections between their time of adoration and personal prayer and their experience of the Lord at Mass every week. And we have really beautiful series on mystigogy, liturgical formation that we put together for the Easter season as well with some wonderful writers. Cleaning some of our Archbishop's, Archbishop Thompson is on that team. Archbishop Sartan, Sister Maria Miguel actually from your community wrote a beautiful reflection that's going to come out next week. So our hope with the kind of content that we're developing is to give the whole church resources to be able to pray the Mass and to spend time with our Lord in adoration and live Eucharistic lives. So that's all I have to say. Thank you so much for your patience and your participation right after lunch when we're a little sleepy. Thank you for welcoming our community to be here today. There's something about our public devotions, our processions, our pilgrimages that can light fires in people's hearts. Probably many of you remember, it's got to be like over 20 years now since they produced it, but the grassroots film company did that God in the streets of New York video. And I just so many people have been touched by that imagery of a Eucharistic procession in one of the biggest cities of the world. And we're planning a major Eucharistic pilgrimage next spring and summer leading up into the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis. There'll be four procession routes or pilgrimage routes from four different locations across our country in the form of a cross. And I think it's going to be a profound time of grace and a charismatic experience for many people. How can we right now start to think about if we're on the pilgrimage route or near it? How can we invite families? How can we invite young people? Can you imagine all those little first communion kids we have whose parents don't go to regular mass, but them coming home with a little invitation to that pilgrimage or that procession? Mommy, Daddy, can we go and what that could do for those parents? I got to talk to one of our young friends that's comprised on the south side of the city and he told me the story of how there was a little girl in their very little Catholic school. Beautiful Catholic school sister Laura teaches at their school. I think this was before she started there, but the little girl made her first communion. And she just enamored of the experience of the Blessed Sacrament mass. And so the next Sunday, she got up and got dressed to go to mass and went into her parents' room and lo and behold, they were still in bed. And she looked at them and she said, "What are you doing? Are we going to mass?" And the father was cut to the heart and the parents both got up and got dressed and they have gone to mass every Sunday since. Can not our children evangelize our families? And how do we empower them to do that? That's part of our vocations, it's consecrated people. Presence immersed in the mystery of the Trinity. This would probably take a lifetime to break down. But let's not forget that the mass, the Paschal mystery, the sacrifice of Christ is not Jesus operating outside of the Father and the Spirit, that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is always a work of the Trinity. Jesus, the Mass is primarily a prayer to the Father through Jesus and the Spirit, right? Most of the prayers that the Priest prays at Mass are directed to the Father. And finally, Eucharistic living and communion. The sacrifice and presence of Jesus opened the possibility for communion. We receive Jesus intimately into our bodies through holy communion. How profound. This intimacy and true communion is the greatest source of nourishment for charity within our souls. We are filled with the love of Jesus, which enables us to love others and to share the bond of unity with them again and again and again. This flows from and leads back to the Mass. So, the midst of the aggress. Fearing back to Vatican II, the origin and growth of the church are symbolized by the blood and water flowing from the side opened on the crucified Jesus. And it was from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross, that there came forth the wondrous sacrament of the whole church. In this image from the Gospel of John, we see that the church, the bride of the Lamb, is born from the sacrificial love of Christ in his self offering on the cross. The Eucharist represents this one sacrifice so that we are placed in communion with it and with the divine love from which it flows forth. We are placed in communion with each other through this love which is given to us. That is why we can say the Eucharist makes the church. Unity of heaven and earth, this is a clip or an image from the project, the veil removed film, which is, I think, very beautiful. You can Google it, it's a seven minute, kind of mini video, but basically through the imagination of these producers helped to show what's really happening at Mass to give people a sense of how heaven literally meets earth. There's this eschatological tension, killed by the Eucharist, expresses and reinforces our communion with the church in heaven. It's not just a happenstance that we invoke Mary and the communion of saints and the prayers at Mass. We are participating in heavenly worship and connected, united with the heavenly Jerusalem. And yet, for so many people, there's such a disconnect. Even I get distracted at Mass. How can we allow the Holy Spirit to teach us to pray the Mass so that we can enter more deeply into this profound gift of communion? The Eucharist is the source of ecclesial communion. It's from Pope Benedict. The Lord Jesus, by offering himself in sacrifice for us and his gift, pointed to the mystery of the church. So we see this in the second Eucharistic prayer, may all of us who share in the body and blood of Christ be brought together in unity by the Holy Spirit. This helps us to see the thing of the sacrament of the Eucharist, is the unity of the faithful within the ecclesial community. The Eucharist is at the heart of this great mystery. The Eucharistic form of Christian life is clearly an ecclesial and communitarian form. And he particularly points to institutes of consecrated life so that we have, we, consecrated, have a particular responsibility for helping to make the faithful conscious, that they belong to the Lord. The Eucharist also deepens our fraternal unity, it's the source of it. The gift of Christ and his spirit, which we receive in the Eucharistic communion, super abundantly fills the yearning for fraternal unity, deeply rooted in the human heart. The seeds of disunity, which daily experience, we daily experience, shows to be so deeply rooted in humanity as a result of sin. And this disunity is countered by the unifying power of the body of Christ, the Eucharist, building up the church, creates human community. And then finally, this call to evangelization, which don't hold a second, the magisterial teachings all talk about this, I mean, Benedict, this is from John Paul. He says we can say not only that each of us receives Christ, but also that Christ receives each of us. Eucharistic communion brings about in a sublime way the mutual abiding of Christ and each of his followers. The Eucharist thus appears as both the source and the summit of all evangelization since its goal is the communion of mankind with Christ and in him with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Finally, I think this is the last slide, almost. So finally, I know everyone here has either studied or will study vida consecrata. It's the last major church document to be published on the consecrated life. And I've always been particularly drawn to paragraph 46. And it's right here, this little section on the screen where it talks about how religious are to be experts in communion. The great task also belongs to the consecrated life in the light of the teaching about the church as communion, so strongly proposed by the Second Vatican Council. Consecrated persons are asked to be true experts of communion and to practice the spirituality of communiones. Witnesses and architects of the plan for unity, which is the crowning point of human history in God's design. If you look at the catechism of the Catholic Church when it talks about the sacraments, the sacraments of vocation, it talks about holy orders and matrimony as sacraments in the service of communion. So those two sacraments are ordered outward toward the other. And in this church document, John Paul II identifies religious men and women consecrated people with the call to be experts in communion. And of course, the communion has to be centered on Psalm 1, of course, Jesus. I really love this image from the vena consisters, from your community's website, sisters. But how all the sisters are pointing forward towards the altar, towards the tabernacle, they're all looking in the same direction. There's a unity there, but it can't just stay in the chapel. And that's a real struggle. It's really easy to kneel down and face the same altar and say the same prayers. But when we leave the chapel, how do we remain in communion, not just with Jesus, but with one another? We leave that chapel as living tabernacles. And I'm so ready to be annoyed with my sisters. You know, at a whim, let's really say it. But the good news is, if I can recognize that, that's the path to freedom. Right? How can we learn to love one another as Jesus has loved us? How can we stop seeing one another as an obstacle to my growth in holiness and instead a partner, a companion, on that road with Jesus? And how can we model that for the rest of the church? Because that's what religious life is meant to be, leaven for the church. We're supposed to hope the whole church to see that original design of Christian community that we read about in Acts is not just something for the ancient history of our church. It's for today, it's for right here and right now. And we know that all community life is struggling. Family life is struggling. So much struggle around this beautiful gift of communion that Jesus so desires for us, to the point of giving himself to make it possible. So before I share a couple of resources with you, I wanted to relate a story that I've recently been reflecting on in my own life that for me helps me to understand this call to live a Eucharistic life and what it means to pattern my own attitudes and dispositions after those of Jesus in sacrifice, presence and communion. [Applause] Thank you for joining us for this podcast. I hope that this podcast has inspired you and that you will pray, along with me, for an increase in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. O God, throughout the ages, you have called women and men to pursue lives of perfect charity through the evangelical councils of poverty, chastity and obedience. We give you thanks for these courageous witnesses of faith and models of inspiration. Their pursuit of holy lives teaches us to make a more perfect offering of ourselves to you. Continue to enrich your church by calling forth sons and daughters who, having found the pearl of great price, treasure the kingdom of heaven above all things, amen. Thank you and God bless.
