Monday Musings - Let Us Be Real About Eucharistic Revival

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How can we expect the current efforts toward Eucharistic Revival to bear fruit when we have not addressed the real and obvious reasons why so few Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament? 

Over the next several weeks, God willing, I will highlight those reasons, one by one. These issues have been raised for decades and have been ignored. Those who raise them are dismissed and cast aside as if they were lepers.

Let's begin by pondering these words written by Father Donald Haggerty more than five years ago. How are our Bishops and the current Revival efforts addressing the concerns Father [and countless other souls] have raised? 

"When we realize after a serious conversion the true holiness of the Eucharist, the presence of God Himself in the Host, there is bound to be a spiritual discomfort and unease in seeing at times the dishonor accorded the sacredness of the Mass. Fervent prayer at Mass can be an arduous task when challenged by casual priestly gestures, slapdash improvisations, banal comments.

With the rapid words and quick movements of some priests, it can be difficult to realize that an enormous event takes place with every consecration at Mass. The external displays are often hard to distinguish from an indifference to the transcendent mystery. The clerical disregard for the sacredness of the Mass, moreover, cannot be unlinked with the diminished faith in the real presence of the Eucharist among many Catholics. The almost universal reception of Holy Communion at weekend Masses raises precisely a question of real belief in the truth of the Eucharist. The phenomenon is a symptom of the privatization of faith in our time.

Relations with God, including the reception the Eucharist, have become for many people a matter of private determination, without reference to a wider body of shared Catholic discipline and belief. The likely prevalence of sacrilegious Communion, with perhaps no comparable precedent in history, surely contributes in turn to a slow bleeding within the Body of the Church during the current era. The uncertain, vague sense of the Eucharist is aligned inevitably with a reduced awareness of the person of Jesus Christ as true God and man.

A soul recently converted and drawn to the Eucharist will be sensitive to these signs of the times.”

(From Conversion: Spiritual Insights Into An Essential Encounter with God by Father Donald Haggerty)