LITURGY

Br. Basil Piette and Br. Benedict Maria in procession (Image: Hansen)

With liturgical practice so important to the life of the monastic community, The Current has established this monthly column to consider this central element. For this publication year, we will turn to the center of the center, the source and summit, which is the Holy Eucharist. This focus is inspired by the eucharistic renewal advancing within the church, proposed and supported by Pope Francis and the American bishops. Brother Benedict Maria, in the midst of seminary studies in preparation for the priesthood, has had a kind of front row seat in this renewal. His experience has provided the catalyst for our series. As the seminary progresses in preparing its candidates for their sacramental role, the fortuitous occurrence of the eucharistic renewal offers a unique opportunity. “It is not part of our program as such,” Br. Benedict says, “but many of our members have been involved with it.” His own involvement has prompted The Current to turn its attention the Eucharist for this publication year.

Bishop Andrew Cozzens, chairman of the Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis, is heading up the American renewal efforts, which kicked off on the feast of Corpus Christi in 2022. In his invitational video on the USCCB website, he states, “It is our mission to renew the church by kindling in God’s people a living relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. We want everyone to encounter the love of Jesus Christ truly present in the Eucharist and to experience the life-changing effects of that love. We want to see a movement of Catholics across the United States that are healed, converted, formed, and unified by an encounter with Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and then sent out on mission for the life of the world.” The renewal has been strengthened by the support of Pope Francis, who this past June (2023) met a group led by Bishop Cozzens, blessing a monstrance to be used for the U.S. National Eucharistic Congress in 2024. The Holy Father spoke of the great gift Jesus offers of himself in the Eucharist, by which believers are nourished and consoled. He noted the unfortunate reality that today many Catholics, “believe that the Eucharist is more a symbol than the reality of the Lord's presence and love.” But, “it is more than a symbol; it is the real and loving presence of the Lord.” (reported by C. Wooden, Catholic News Service)

Br. Joseph Byron and Fr. Gregory Havill in Eucharistic Procession (Image: Hansen)

Brother Benedict highlights a community he has encountered in Florida who exemplify an engagement in eucharistic renewal: The Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Many of his fellow seminarians are inspired by its mission, and one of his seminary professors, Father Joseph Rogers, with the blessing of Miami’s Archbishop Thomas Wenski, recently became the first professed member of the community’s male branch. The Nicaraguan-born Mother Adela Galindo founded this active and growing community as a congregation of sisters in Miami, where it is largely based, although it has grown to have communities in Florida and several other states, as well as internationally. In October, the Servants hosted their fourth “Eucharistic-Marian Congress” in Miami, which drew a number of Br. Benedict’s classmates. The event featured speakers from around the world, including Archbishop Wenski and Mother Adela, as well as the former Swiss Guard and close attendant of John Paul II, Dr. Mario Enzler, who visited Portsmouth in 2014. The Servants also hold Friday “Eucharistic Cenacles” which include a rosary, Mass and time for adoration. These include prayer for the sick and intercession for the needs of the world, also addressed through the community’s service work. Mother Adela explains: “It is our greatest desire that in the Eucharistic Cenacles we may all come to know the power of the redeeming love of the Eucharistic Heart of Christ and the maternal mediation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that, like the Apostles, we may receive the strength of the Holy Spirit to be ardent witnesses in the New Evangelization and builders of a new civilization of love and life, thus disposing ourselves to fulfill the designs of mercy that the Two Hearts have for humanity.” (Mother Adela Galindo, Foundress SCTJM)

How to best understand eucharistic renewal is, Brother Benedict notes, founded on how to understand the Eucharist itself. This central Mystery, as he has been learning in his formation in the sacraments, “must be fully understood in the greater context of faith.” He explains that his instructor in sacraments, Father George Nursey, who has served as parochial vicar for the Diocese of Orlando (a collection of his homilies is on YouTube), uses the allegory of a mountain: “If the Eucharist is the summit, we still must see how that summit requires the mountain.” Divine Adoration, for example, is not a devotion that can be disassociated from the ecclesial life in which it grows and which it strengthens. Br. Benedict smiles to discern a kind of irony here: “It is interesting that my Synoptics teacher highlights the eucharist, while my Sacramental Theology teacher highlights the Word!” What Br. Benedict sees as a blessing in this study is the awareness of “a kind of balance” in our Eucharistic life and in its renewal, which incorporates an awareness that the Lord is fully present to us both in the consecrated host and in the body that is the church. This type of balance Br. Benedict finds in a favorite quotation from Origen, who explains that the word of God is no less “venerable” than the body of the Lord: “You who are accustomed to take part in divine mysteries know, when you receive the body of the Lord, how you protect it with all caution and veneration lest any small part fall from it, lest anything of the consecrated gift be lost. For you believe, and correctly, that you are answerable if anything falls from there by neglect. But if you are so careful to preserve his body, and rightly so, how do you think that there is less guilt to have neglected God’s word than to have neglected his body?” (Oxford Handbook)

Fr. Andrew Senay, O.S.B. lifts chalice, Ab. Michael Brunner, concelebrant) (Image: Hansen)

The 10th National Eucharistic Conference, slated for July 2024 in Indianapolis, is the culminating five-day event of the formal national renewal. The Conference anticipates 80,000 participants and will feature leading Catholic personalities, such as Bishop Robert Barron, Fr. Mike Schmitz, Sr. Miriam James Heidland, and many others. The event also features a nationwide “Walking Pilgrimage” to Indianapolis, essentially an extended national Eucharistic Procession, with four starting points around the country. Br. Benedict notes, citing a report posted on The Pillar, that the walking pilgrimage has itself become a flashpoint for discussion on the proper “balance” he has discerned in his seminary formation. Notably, when the pilgrimage will pass through Chicago, Cardinal Blase Cupich has requested that the host be reserved in a ciborium, rather than exposed in a monstrance as in most of the pilgrimage procession. Cardinal Cupich in fact was one of the early proponents of eucharistic renewal, embracing in Commonweal in 2021 Peter Steinfels’ argument that, “the U.S. bishops do not need another document on the Eucharist but rather a strategy on the Eucharist.” The Cardinal cautioned against an overly “privatized” practice of the devotion of Adoration, which should typically be connected to a community liturgical setting, as well as against a spirituality that could “objectify” the Eucharist. The Cardinal expressed at this time the hope that the renewal will be, “grounded in a robust and sound theology that reminds us what the Eucharist means, not only for our practice of worship, but also for how we leaven the world the Lord made for us.” (Commonweal). Such a “sound theology” seems to be the aim of Br. Benedict’s formation program, which seeks for the proper integration of our eucharistic devotion and our liturgical and ecclesial life.

Br. Benedict is inspired by this movement of renewal, which has been drawing many of our country’s young leaders. He highlights the Eucharistic Procession that was part of the culminating Mass celebrated by Bishop Tobin for the Humanitas Symposium of the Portsmouth Institute this summer, as an instance of “our own community taking up its part” in eucharistic renewal. We might also add the regular weekly adoration in our church each Friday afternoon. It is the desire both for renewal, as well as for a sound theological understanding of its meaning, that hopefully will guide the series of articles on the Eucharist that The Current intends to offer over the next months.

Friday afternoon Adoration

Notes
- Origen quotation from Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, translated by R. E. Heine, from The Oxford Handbook of Christian Monasticism.
- Information on the national eucharistic conference can be found at: https://www.usccb.org/resources/welcome-national-eucharistic-revival.