 I feel so privileged to be with you this evening as you know I'm the chair of the Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis and so the Bosco conference is famous in the work that I do and so I've wanted to come ever since I've been the chair it took me three years to be able to figure out my schedule to get here but I'm really delighted to be with you. I was thinking as I was coming in though the last time I was here at a summer conference was the summer of 1998 I was a young priest I was a speaker at that conference and we were still on the tent back in those days I don't know if any of you remember the tent and of course as was normal at those conferences a tornado decided to come through and so I remember being locked in a locker room somewhere with Bob Rice and about 30 young people trying to entertain them while the tornado was going through as we were praying against that tornado. Really grateful to be here with all of you though you know as a bishop I learned long ago that if you want something done in a parish you talk to the DRE right and we called them by different names today evangelization directors those kinds of things but really I always found that the DRE the evangelization director those involved directly in the work of Catechesis had their heart on the pulse of the parish they know all the volunteers they know what works what doesn't work right and they have evangelistic hearts and are in real ways completely dedicated to the new evangelization so it's an honor for me to be here with you especially knowing that you do all of that for very little earthly reward and so I'm really grateful to you and I just want to say thank you on behalf of the bishops of the country I represent the USCCB thank you thank you for your service and thank you for the love and the sacrifice with which you do it there's a beautiful section actually in Pope Francis's first encyclical on the joy of the gospel which is still my favorite of his writings and he talks in that last section you might remember it about spirit filled evangelizers and he speaks at a certain moment about people like you people who are imbued with the spirit of the gospel who are trying to serve the love of the Lord have this deep desire to see others come to know Jesus and to know his love and to become his disciples and yet of course at times it's difficult and at times it can feel like is my work really fruitful in my scene many results from my work and Pope Francis writes with encouragement these words and I put them on the screen actually there we go no single act of love for God will be lost no generous effort is meaningless no painful endurance is wasted all of these encircle our world like a vital force sometimes it seems that our work is fruitless but mission is not like a business transaction or investment or even a humanitarian activity so important to understand how different what we do is from those things it may be that the Lord uses our sacrifices to shower blessings in another part of the world which we will never visit it's actually beautiful to think about this really this reality of a spiritual reality that we're all involved in and this spiritual work of actually bringing the whole world to know Jesus and we're all involved in that work in our own little ways and there's actually a spiritual side of it that will never get to see at least not until we get to heaven the other reason other than to thank you for heroic sacrifices the other reason I wanted to come of course is to talk to you about the Eucharistic revival because I know that if the Eucharistic revival is going to be fruitful it's going to depend on people like you people who are active in parishes and can actually help us to get this revival to meet the grassroots and so I actually don't want to talk tonight about the three-year plan of our Eucharistic revival you I'm sure all heard about it you can watch talks on the internet about that I've got plenty of those on there you can certainly go to our website EucharisticRevival.org just want to I do want to point out where we are in this national Eucharistic revival we're actually just beginning I know it seems that we've been doing it for a long time we we sort of you know had a bit of a deception we called it a three-year revival but we also had a year zero right and so we just finished the diocesan year and we're just beginning the parish year and so really the parish year is this opportunity for us to bring this into the parishes and to begin to reach the grassroots some of those people who need it the most we're all very aware of the statistics and the reasons behind the national Eucharistic revival we did a CARES study that kind of followed up on the study that had been done by the Pew Forum and the CARES study showed that you know statistics amongst belief in the real presence of Jesus and the Eucharist were slightly higher than Pew Forum showed so 40% instead 30% but one of the things it showed is that of those 40% who said they believe Jesus was present in the Eucharist only 15% of them went to Mass every Sunday obviously there's a huge gap there right and those are the people that are really the low-hanging fruit for what we're trying to do in the Eucharistic revival and so we do hope that you'll find a way to enter into this parish year we have this parish point person portal at Eucharistic revival dot org backslash hash slash or whatever you call that thing parish point person right and you can sign up there to be a parish point person of course with permission of your pastor we currently have about 3,000 parish point persons we'd love to have 5,000 so if any of you aren't signed up yet we invite you to do that you'll also find there a parish playbook and that parish playbook is just a guide to try to help you be creative in implementing the revival in your parish and really that parish playbook gives kind of practical ideas we also form in an online community I'm gonna do a webinar in the beginning of August for all those parish point people who want to sign up just so that we can begin to form this community that we can begin to work in parishes this year and I will say a word about what's coming next summer the National Eucharistic Congress in a little bit what I wanted to do tonight rather than talk about practicals is actually focus on method I wanted to talk about the method of the National Eucharistic revival that we've been trying to do and in particular to talk about how it flows from really this whole understanding of what we call evangelizing catechesis that the new director of catechesis is about and so I the title I gave the talk was encounter and mission at the heart of evangelizing catechesis so as I said I chaired the committee on evangelize evangelization and catechesis for the USCCB and when the new directory came out and we were forming our own Institute on the catechism we really decided that we needed to define what we were gonna do and we came up with a definition for evangelizing catechesis this is really just a summary of the new directory but to me when I when I read the directory and catechesis I think the great gift of it is that it situates catechesis in the work of evangelization and I think this will be one of the lasting contributions actually a Pope Francis pontificate this directory so we came up with this definition at the heart of the church's mission to all people an evangelizing catechesis seeks to deepen a personal encounter with Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit it proclaims the core message of the gospel the karygma it accompanies people to a response of faith and conversion to Christ it provides a systematic exposition of God's revelation within the communion of the Catholic Church and it sends out missionary disciples as witnesses to the good news of salvation who promote a vision of life of humanity of justice and of human fraternity really this is forming everything we do now at the USCCB it's forming our own catechetical work in terms of how we evaluate catechetical programs it's this idea that in fact evangelic catechesis has to be evangelizing and it when I summarize it I really just summarize it with two words encounter and mission encounter and mission and this is really what we've tried to build the whole Eucharistic revival around inviting people to an encounter with Jesus and sending them on mission Pope Francis of course has spoken so eloquently about the encounter and so importantly I invite all Christians everywhere at this very moment to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ or at least an openness to letting him encounter them and I ask all of you unfailingly to do this each day why is encounter the heart of the discipleship and that's this I want to talk about tonight it's actually very important to understand because without encounter no real discipleship is possible and encounter leads to mission and you will never have a missionary who hasn't had this encounter of course mission is our greatest need it's what we're really in need of and we're all aware so much of the need of the church to make this missionary conversion that we have to make I love this line which is from Pope Francis's letter on the on the liturgy desiderio desiderabi he begins it this way the world still does not know it but everyone is invited to the supper of the wedding of the lamb we must now allow ourselves even a moment of rest knowing not not everyone has received an invitation to this supper or knowing that others have forgotten it or have gotten lost along the way in the twists and turns of human living this is what I spoke of when I said I dream of a missionary option that is a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything so that the church's customs ways of doing things times and schedules languages and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today's world rather than for herself preservation I want this so that all can be seated at the supper of the sacrifice of the lamb and live from him and I read that I said that's what the Eucharistic revivals about this is what it means that the Eucharist is the source and the summit of a vaginal evangelization right and in fact all of us are the ones called to do this going out one of the great privileges of my life as I got to know the missionaries of charity Mother Teresa sisters and when I lived in Rome I was a confessor for her sisters for her novices and I've gotten to give some retreats for them and one of the sisters I got to meet was sister La Tizia sister La Tizia was number I think she was number six in the missionaries of charity so each of the missionaries has a number right Mother Teresa number one sister Agnes number two sister Gertrude number three sister La Tizia was number six and so she was part of the very first group and she said to me once she said you know many people think Mother Teresa founded the missionaries of charity because of Matthew 25 you remember Matthew 25 is that famous passage where Jesus says whatever you did to the least you did it to me and of course there's clearly one of Mother Teresa's favorite scripture passages she quoted it constantly she called it the gospel on five fingers right you did it to me whatever you did to your spouse you did it to me whatever you did to the poor you did it to me right but then she went out to say actually I think Mother Teresa founded the missionaries of charity because of Matthew 22 Matthew chapter 22 is the passage where the father is holding a wedding feast for his son and people don't come he sends out the emissaries to invite them and they say oh we're too busy or I just got married or I have things to do and they don't come and so then the father gets upset and he says go out to the highways and byways I want my wedding banquet to be full and she said this is why the missionaries of charity exist because the poor and the blind and the lame need to know they're invited to the banquet brothers and sisters we live in a very poor society so many people so poor because they don't know they're actually invited to this banquet this eternal banquet and of course there are long ways from it and we have to do a lot to help them get there but one of the things we have to do is invite them to come to understand that Jesus is a real living person who wants them at this banquet so I want to talk a little bit about this encounter and I kind of want to define it for you again Pope Francis says it very strongly at one point he says Christian faith is either an encounter with him alive or it does not exist for people to experience true conversion for people to be able to become a disciple of Jesus they have to encounter him it's one of the sad realities of the gospel we heard about it last Sunday in the parable of the sower and the seed there were thousands of people tens of thousands of people who saw Jesus preach they saw him perform a miracle maybe they even ate some of the food that he miraculously multiplied and they went home that night and they said wow that was really interesting that was nice and then they just went on with life their lives were not changed by meeting Jesus then we see these people in the scriptures who had real encounters with him like Peter or Matthew he called them he changed their life for the woman at the well or the woman caught in adultery or Mary Magdalene were encounters like Zacchaeus or Bartimaeus all these people met Jesus and their lives were transformed by him one of the great examples of this encounter is in the first chapter of John's gospel and it's actually the story of John's own encounter with Jesus we know that Andrew and John were disciples of Saint John the Baptist and they'd been following John the Baptist and living with him in the desert and one day Jesus walked by and and John the Baptist pointed him and said behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and Andrew and John two disciples of John the Baptist they were intrigued by this and they started to follow Jesus right and as they followed Jesus he turned and he looked at them and he said what are you looking for very interesting right his first question is really about them and inviting them to look into their own hearts and say what's my desire what am I looking for right and they responded rabbi where are you staying and he said to them come and you will see so they went and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day it was about four in the afternoon you ever wondered why Saint John records that little fact it was about four in the afternoon we know why he'll always remember the exact moment that he met Jesus because from that moment his whole life changed of course we don't know what happened that day that they were with Jesus but but we do know we know what happened as they began to talk to him they began to realize this man was different than anyone they had ever met they began to realize that he had the answers to questions in their hearts they didn't even know they had they began to realize that he was the answer to their questions in fact they began to realize they couldn't live without him they couldn't go on in life without being near Jesus in fact the next thing we know happens is that Andrew gets up and goes as finds his brother Peter and says we have found the Messiah imagine that Andrew is a religious Jew imagine what it means for him like what his tone of voice must have been when he said to his brother we found the Messiah the one the anointed one I don't know how many of you are familiar with Luigi Giussani and Father Luigi Giussani in the communion liberation movement and some people find Father Giussani easy to read other people don't you have to learn a new vocabulary to read him but I find him on this very point about the encounter with Jesus so inspiring and just want to read with you one quote from him where he talks about what he calls the exceptionality of Jesus what is it that makes Jesus so different from everyone else there are deep needs that give a goal to living to reasoning and to moving and when something corresponds to the criteria by which everything is judged and lived when it corresponds to the criteria by which life is lived and should be lived when I begin to understand like oh wow this causes me to see my life in a new way and in fact in a beautiful and right way when it corresponds to the deepest needs of the human heart when it brings to fruition what life has been awaiting then it's exceptional of course the exceptionality of Jesus is his divinity he's a divine person and when someone really encounters Jesus they encounter his divinity and then they begin to realize he's the answer to all their questions Pope Benedict speaks about it this way Pope Francis always quotes it being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea but the encounter with an event a person which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction you all know this you know that this encounter is actually something that has changed us and it's actually really important to think back on those old moments of our own encounter in our lives it's a beautiful line in the Gospels when Jesus rises from the dead and he says go and tell my brothers I'll meet them in Galilee of course Galilee was the place of the encounter for them we're all supposed to go back to those moments in our life and remember them and study them how did it happen in my life and how can I talk about it and share it because I want others to meet him too there are essential elements to this encounter the first is this realization that Jesus is God we see this in so many different places one of the places I like to point out is Luke chapter 5 verses 1 to 11 remember this is the great catch of fish in St. Peter of course if you follow the passage Peter's just met Jesus he's been at his house the night before he healed his mother-in-law and then Jesus healed a bunch of other people and then Peter goes out and fishes all night because he works at night seems that Jesus went off and prayed early in the morning and then in the morning Peter after fished caught nothing he's cleaning his nets and Jesus is teaching on the shore of course we don't know what Jesus was saying you can imagine what he was saying but we don't know and then at a certain point Jesus gets into the boat in order to be able to teach to more people he asks Peter can I get into your boat and Peter allows him and then after teaching that's the moment when Jesus looks at Peter and says put out into the deep and lower the nets for the catch and Peter hesitates but then he submits and then of course is the miraculous catch and what's Peter's response he realizes he's before no ordinary man he's before God and so what does he say leave me Lord that that word Lord being so important for a Jewish man right leave me Lord I'm a sinful man and this is actually the second element of a real encounter with Jesus and an essential element in the same moment I realized Jesus is God I realize I'm a sinner and it's very important that all of us go through this moment that we have that experience of our deep need for God not just that it's nice that there's a savior but I'm actually a sinner and I need a savior without him I will be lost and this is part of what the reordering of life that happens in this encounter right when I encounter Jesus I realize my own need for him and I realize my life has to be reordered this is the metanoia it's the change of heart that Jesus always preached about repent metanoia and believe in the gospel right it's this need that I have to fundamentally change in order to follow him and every time there's a real encounter you see this Mary Magdalene the woman at the well Zacchaeus what does the key is say if I defrauded anyone I'll pay them back fourfold because he realizes when he's standing before Jesus that he's a sinner I actually think it's been really important to emphasize this in the Eucharistic revival because there will be no revival of the Eucharist without a revival of the sacrament of confession just won't happen right we need a revival the sacrament of penance and we know that we could be inviting people back to the Eucharist but if they're not coming back converted we could actually be hurting them right St. Paul's very clear about this right when someone receives communion in the wrong way we eat and drink condemnation on ourselves so this call the conversion has to be part of our work in the revival in my own diocese we're gonna we're gonna a bishop can do this I found out you can change the readings on Sundays at least during ordinary time so we're gonna have five weeks this year we're all the priests preach on the Eucharist for in October and I want really clearly that one of those weeks is gonna be about the relationship between the sacrament of penance and the Eucharist that essential relationship right so this aspect of repentance allows the encounter to be authentic and we must invite people to it we shouldn't be ashamed of inviting people to it the third essential element and this is the other beautiful thing because it comes at exactly the same moment that I realize I'm a sinner I realize I'm infinitely loved when Jesus says to Peter leave me Lord I'm a sinful man the Lord looks at him and he doesn't leave and he says come and follow me I'll make you a fisher of men when Jesus looks at the key is when Jesus looks at the woman at the well when Jesus looks at the woman caught in adultery they all experience that their sinners but in the same moment they experience their infinitely loved and that experience my deep need for him the fact that I'm infinitely loved by him that's what allows them to begin to follow him in a new way of life of course everybody experiences these four things in different ways but when we're talking about an encounter we have to be attentive to these four things because every one of them is essential if I simply experience that I'm a sinner without experience that I'm infinitely loved there'll be a lack in my spiritual life that can be very harmful for me right I need to experience that all of it leads me to following him so it begins with this encounter and it grows in knowledge and then God begins to call us to something greater I hope you realize that this encounter by the way is not just a matter of intellectual material or good catechesis here above all at the at the Bosco conference we're about good catechesis right and we're trying to repair this important work of catechesis in our country but we have to remember good catechesis will not make people good Christians it's not enough I always love this quote from Pope Benedict because no one could accuse Pope Benedict of being an anti-intellectual he says the organ for seeing God is the heart the intellect alone is not enough in order for man to become capable of perceiving God the energies of existence have existence have to work in harmony his will must be pure and so must the underlying effective dimension of his soul which gives intelligence and will its direction in other words what we have to come to as a conversion of heart and we all know this is possible right I can speak the truth to someone but if there will their hearts not open to me they'll never come to this encounter with Jesus this is part of the parable of the soul or the seed right it's the weeds and the rocks in the heart and this is where actually a finding ways to get to the heart especially showing people love showing people care showing people compassion so that I can begin to open the heart that can then open them to be able to receive and their intellect the truth what this means is that people must come to meet Jesus as a real living person many years ago I ran across this quotation from Saint Teresa of Calcutta through my knowledge of her sisters and I don't know how much you know about Saint Teresa's story but you might remember she was from Albania she was an Irish missionary sister so she joined the Loretto sisters was sent to India where she did her formation took her vows and lived her religious life as a Loretto sister and she was a very happy Loretto sister she was principal of the school in Calcutta where the upper-class children went to school but she also had an incredible heart and Jesus seeing that incredible heart began to reveal to her his desire that she would leave her community and start her own community dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor in India you might remember that the heart of that inspiration came on her way to her annual retreat on the train and I don't know about you but I do actually often have good prayer in airplanes and trains I don't know why there's something about it but she was on the train and she experienced this vision really of Jesus and his thirst on the cross that led her to leave her religious community and to found a community dedicated to satiating the thirst of Jesus in the poorest of the poor and after she had founded the community in the late 1940s early 1950s and the community grew and she was getting close to her death in the early 1990s her sisters asked her to write about her inspiration that led her to found the missionaries of charity and so she wrote a letter to them called the Varanasi letter you can read it online and the interesting thing is she doesn't really ever talk about the inspiration we had to wait for her to die and then her spiritual directors who kept all of her letters published to them right after she died but she does speak about the heart of it and she speaks about it this way remember she's writing this to her sisters Jesus wants me to tell you again especially in this holy week how much is the love he has for each one of you beyond all you can imagine I worry some of you have not really met Jesus one-to-one you and Jesus alone we may spend time in the chapel but have you seen with the eyes of your soul how he looks at you with love do you really know the living Jesus not from books but from being with him in your heart have you heard the loving words he speaks to you ask for the grace he's longing simply to give it until you can hear Jesus in the silence of your own heart you will not be able to hear him saying I thirst in the hearts of the poor never give up this intimate contact with Jesus as a real living person not just an idea how can we last even one day living our life without hearing Jesus say I love you impossible our soul needs that as much as the body needs to breathe the air if not prayer is dead and meditation only thinking I suppose if Mother Teresa could write this to her sisters women who have taken vows most of them left their homelands traveled far from their home live a very radical life of of poverty and prayer if she could say to them I'm worried some of you still have not really met Jesus one-to-one you and Jesus alone I suppose I could even say it to all of you at the Bosco conference and I suppose if you're like me you would recognize that sometimes this is true of me right that I don't actually listen to the words he wants to speak in my heart and that my prayer is more about thinking than being with him in my heart have you heard the loving words he speaks to you ask for the grace he's longing simply to give it have you seen with the eyes of your heart how he looks at you with love this is the daily encounter we're called to and it's the daily encounter that allows us to become real witnesses of the living Jesus now I hope you can see that our teaching on the real presence of Jesus is one of the key ways to facilitate this encounter one of the reasons that Jesus remains with us in the Blessed Sacrament in the Eucharist is so that we can have this encounter remember even the very first Easter what was the cry of the heart of the two apostles on the way to Emmaus stay with us remain with us and how Jesus answered that prayer when he took bread said the blessing broke it and gave it to them right there are lots of ways and important ways that we should and could talk about or define our teaching on the real presence but at the heart of it is this it's the simple truth that the same Jesus who was born in Bethlehem who walked on the earth who suffered and died on the cross who rose from the dead and is seated at the right hand of the father that same Jesus is really truly substantially present here and now in the Eucharist so that you can unite your life to him so that you can receive him in Holy Communion so that you can adore him and one of the keys the fact the key of our understanding of the Eucharist is this understanding of the personal presence of Jesus it's an interesting little fact I came across in my study of the Eucharist some years ago in that the dividing line between a Catholic understanding of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and a Protestant understanding of the real president of Jesus in the Eucharist the dividing line is actually adoration it's an interesting little fact every Catholic would always say that after Jesus after the priest has said those words take this all you need this is my body this is my blood that the change is so effective in the elements that the elements themselves are now worthy of the adoration due to God alone and every Protestant who might in some way want to affirm that Jesus is coming to us through these elements or at least through the action of Holy Communion would always say well absolutely not that would be idolatry it's this personal presence of the one who is God that we adore you all know this of course in your own work this is why adoration is so powerful for the encounter with Jesus I was just with Pope Francis about three weeks ago and we brought to him a monstrance that we wanted blessed for the National Eucharistic Congress and he gave us a beautiful speech about the revival in the Congress the monstrance was four feet tall we got it from Mexico we brought it over on the airplane everything we got it there and the Holy Father said oh grande the big smile you know but he bit he gave a very strong talk about the whole you really capturing the Eucharistic revival but one of the things he said is we have to teach people to do adoration especially adoration in silence he said bishops need to cataclyse people to do adoration right now of course you've all seen this you've seen the effect on young people for example when you prepare them well right you give them some taste of the karygma and some catechesis and you get them to confession and then you put them in front of Jesus in the blessed sacrament the power of what happens I remember once this was at a student conference in the Twin Cities I was a parish priest at this time and it was one young man on the on the weekend who made it clear that he was only there because his parents made him come you know and just the way that he was acting throughout the weekend and so on Saturday night as we're preparing for the time of adoration I went up to him beforehand and I sort of challenged him I got in his face a little bit and I said to him I put my finger in his chest I said Jesus wants to do something in you tonight he was like whatever yeah right well that young man at the end of the night came up to me with tears in his eyes and he said how did you know how did you know well I know Jesus right that man young man never missed youth group after that never did because he had an encounter with a living God now of course the most powerful way we can have this encounter with the Lord is at mass and Pope Francis speaks about this in his letter on the on the liturgy I just want to put this quote up here for you the liturgy guarantees for us the possibility of such an encounter for us a vague memory of the last supper would do no good we need to be present at that supper to be able to hear his voice to eat his body and drink his blood we need him in the Eucharist and in all the sacraments we are guaranteed the possibility of encountering the Lord Jesus and of having the power of his paschal mystery reach us the salvific power of the sacrifice of Jesus his every word his every gesture glance and feeling reaches us through the celebration of the sacraments in fact it's hard to imagine a more profound encounter with Jesus than the way he comes to us in holy communion coming to us as our food I really believe this is one of the reasons why the Eucharistic revival is so important right now in the church sometimes when I think about conversion and evangelization I think about what I call the the Guadalupe effect this is the name I came up with I don't know anybody else talks about it but so what happened at at Guadalupe you remember what happened what happened was that when the Spanish missionaries showed up in Mexico City in the middle of the 16th century and they discovered the most evil culture that had ever existed in the history of the world they discovered a culture that was entire religion was based on human sacrifice right the Aztecs sacrificed literally hundreds of people every day in there in their temples right brutal human sacrifice and then they wanted to evangelize these people now the conquistador is they they helped them at least by shutting down the sacrifices but then they of course they abused these people terribly and so they were they didn't want to join the religion of the conquistador is in fact we have a letter that was written by the Bishop of Mexico City at the time it was a Franciscan and he was trying to get the king of Spain to discipline the soldiers so that they would treat the native people better but the native people knew he was trying to do this and so they kept intercepting his letters and they never got to Spain and he knew they weren't getting there so finally he found one of his own countrymen and he bribed him to carry this secret letter to the king of Spain and we have that letter actually in in the archives and he write writes to the king and he says the situation here is so desperate that unless there's help from heaven everything will be lost three months later there was help from heaven our lady appeared and the largest conversion of a people in the history of the world happened right it was something like 7 million people in five years converted to the faith you see when the times are most difficult God acts most powerfully it's what I call the Guadalupe principle it's true and anybody who's watching knows that we're living in difficult times about a year ago a little over a year ago somebody sent me the encyclical of Pope Leo the 13th on the Eucharist he wrote in encyclical in 1902 he dies in 1906 so it's kind of his last major encyclical of wondrous love and you remember that Pope Leo the 13th was the pope who had a sense that the enemy was gonna have a lot of power in the 20th century the sense was so strong in him that he ordered that at the end of every low mass across the whole church that the prayer of the Saint Michael would be prayed to defend the church after every mass right and he writes in this encyclical as he begins it and he basically says knowing or having this sense of the power of evil in the times even knowing all of the different things he could write about all of the different errors that he could condemn all the important teachings that he could do he said what I want to do at this moment is to focus the church on the Eucharist because if the church is strong in her love for the Eucharist the church will be strong to stand against the enemy and as soon as I read that I said to myself this is why God wants a Eucharist a revival in our country right now not just for those people who we hope who don't currently believe in the Eucharist who might come to know him but for you and me because if we're strengthened in our own relationship with the Eucharist then we'll be strong against the power of the enemy and when I read it I thought about this principle that I've learned from Saint John Paul II and the principle is a simple one it's relationship identity mission maybe you all have heard about it I first learned about it through the Institute for Presley formation out of Omaha and of course it's a simple teaching it's very scriptural it's basically this fact and very much rooted in John Paul II's personalistic anthropology is theology of the body that human beings were made for relationship it's who we are and we actually know who we are from our relationships first and foremost in that original solitude before God as he says in the theology of the body when I come to know who I am as a son or a daughter of God second of course in my relationship with the other when I come to know who I am as a man or a woman right and then of course in relationship with offspring or children the identity is always revealed in the relationship and it's from when we know who we are then we know how we're supposed to live right it's the mission that flows from the identity of course it's easy for all of us and even for the church to get this wrong we can get so focused on the mission that we take our identity from that this is very problematic for the work of evangelization if you've read the book the soul of the apostolate the whole book is about this fact right that the strength of the mission doesn't come from success in the mission it doesn't come from effectiveness in the mission and the gospel doesn't grow from success and effectiveness by a lot of measures Jesus was not at all effective the gospel grows from fruitfulness from the gift of self that happens the gospel grows when we know who we are and can then can discern what we must do and this is true of every individual and it's true of the church if the church loses her eucharistic life she loses her identity the other sacraments to quail vatican too as well as every other ministry of the church every work of the apostolate are tied together with the Eucharist and are directed toward it every time we feed the poor why are we doing that to draw people to the Eucharist every time i teach why am i doing that to draw people to the Eucharist why because the Eucharist is the place where who i am is revealed and who what is revealed about me in the Eucharist what's revealed about me is that i am God's beloved i'm the one to whom Jesus said this is my body given for you this is my blood poured out for you i'm the one who Jesus gave his life for in order to save i'm also the body of Christ i become one with him through the Eucharist such a clear scriptural teaching right for we though many are one body for we all partake of the one loaf in fact this is our identity which leads to mission if i am the beloved of God if i am the body of Christ what does that mean about how i'm supposed to live this is where st. Teresa of Avila would say Christ has no body now but yours no hands no feet on earth but yours yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world yours are the feet which he walks to do good yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world see if we know who we are we know that we have become Jesus and that we're called to live his mission in the world this is the goal of the encounter that we invite people to in the Eucharistic revival and in the Eucharist and as i've said many times this Eucharistic revival is not really a program it's about starting a fire and our goal is actually through this encounter that people will experience this fire and that we'll be able to in kindle in people's hearts this fire i thought about this today because the first reading was moses and the burning bush right that burning bush it always reminds me of the burning heart of Jesus and how that burning heart wants to live in you and me and you remember isaias image as he stands before the the fire of god and he says lord i'm a man of unclean lips and then the angel takes that burning tongue and places it on his lips which the fathers of the church always saw as an image for the Eucharist that's what's supposed to happen is i'm supposed to catch this fire brothers this is this is the reason why i want you all to come to indianapolis next year will you all please come just say yes next year we're going to have the 10th national Eucharistic congress there's been nine of them before they started in the late 19th century they mainly in the beginning were gatherings of priests and bishops just to talk about the Eucharist but what happened in 1926 was we had an international Eucharistic congress and a million people showed up at mondayline seminary in chicago if you've ever been there you've seen the big balda quinoa that they built for adoration above the lake right and then they decided well maybe when we have these national congress we should invite people and they did that in Omaha in 1931 i think it was and 40 000 people showed up and then they did it in cleveland in 1935 and uh another 60 000 people showed up and then they did it in new orleans in like 1939 and 80 000 people showed up and they did it in st paul minnesota in 1941 again 80 000 people showed up and then world war two happened and we couldn't do it anymore and we haven't done it since the last national Eucharist congress was 1941 in st paul minnesota that was number nine we're going to do number 10 next summer right now of course every revival it needs an event and this is what we're going to do we're going to come together in fact just about a year it was a it'll be a year from monday july 17th we're going to gather 80 000 people in lucasol stadium and then we're going to bring in the lord and we're going to ask the lord to revive the faith of our country right and what happens in a revival well god as a as theologians say here god will grip his people with deep conviction repentance forgiveness deliverance from personal sin he'll fill his people with the holy spirit and manifest through them the fruit and graces of the holy spirit he'll fill the church and the community with his presence and power he'll cause non-christians to earnestly seek him he'll ignite in his people young and old a passion to bring the lost to christ at home and around the world this is why we're gathering people to ask the lord to bring a revival i just want to close by talking a little bit about what you can do you know uh i began by talking about how the sacrifices that you make you don't always see what's behind them or why they're fruitful and this is in fact a very important part of the eucharistic revival you know when we talk about the eucharist we speak not only about the presence of the lord and not only about communion but also about sacrifice and we talk about how the mass doesn't simply continue the presence of jesus in the world but it continues his sacrifice one way to say this is to say there was in the history of the world one true act of worship one moment when the perfect person gave everything to the father and in that moment of jesus dying on the cross he reconciled the world to god but god did not want that moment just to be a moment that happened in time but he actually wanted that moment to be present throughout all time so that you and i could be reconciled to god yes but also so that you and i through our sacrifices could participate in that redemption it's a big part of what it means to be part of the body of christ i'm not just called to live in union with jesus yes but actually to live in union with jesus means to make my life a gift the way jesus made his life a gift and to learn that i too as a member of the body of christ have part of this redemption and it's the sacrificial aspect of the eucharist which i think is even less known than the real presence of jesus in the eucharist it's this sacrificial aspect of the eucharist that contributes day by day to the salvation of the world again to quote vatican too the most blessed eucharist contains the entire spiritual boon of the church that is christ himself our past and living bread by the action of the holy spirit through his very flesh vital and vitalizing giving life to men who are thus invited and encouraged to offer themselves their labors and all created things together with him in this light the eucharist shows itself as the source and the apex of the whole work of preaching the gospel you know when i was little my mom used to always say this phrase to me which i didn't like at the time and it was it was offer it up right especially when i was complaining about something but in fact that little saying i believe is the key to this eucharistic revival because what do i mean when i say that what i mean is when i'm going through some difficulty or struggle i'm actually invited to think of someone else who might be struggling more than me i'm invited to think of those many people who never knew jesus and don't know him and i'm invited to take my little suffering whatever it might be in the moment maybe it's a big suffering and then to unite it to jesus's suffering and to believe in faith that this is part of the salvation of the world this brothers and sisters is why we say at every mass pray brothers and sisters that my sacrifice in yours may be acceptable to god the almighty father well what is your sacrifice i don't know maybe it is the difficult relationships you're carrying in your family or in your work maybe it is the experience of your own physical or emotional or spiritual suffering maybe it is the experience of death in some way in your life the cross that you are carrying it can even be your own weakness all that is meant to be placed on the altar and united to jesus's sacrifice and offered to the father for the salvation of the world pope benedict says it this way there's nothing authentically human our thoughts and affections our words and deeds that does not find in the sacrament of the eucharist the form it needs to be lived to the full everything in our life is part of this gift that we make to him brothers and sisters we started the eucharistic revival because of a great need in the church and i believe that it's just one of the things but an important thing that god wants to use to bring healing to our church but this will only happen if you and i live the eucharistic revival just want to close by sharing with you one story of a man i met who for me became kind of a living icon of the eucharist so when i was a student priest in Rome i got invited to uh belgium a few times and there i was invited uh to do retreats for the missionaries of charity they have a little retreat house in gent belgium and uh mother Teresa's sisters are in gent because they mother Teresa wanted her sisters to be close to a man named fernand let me tell you about fernand so when mother Teresa came to visit gent she gave a talk and the bishop asked if he would leave she would leave some of her sisters there and she said well i don't see a lot of poor people here i'm not sure why i would leave my sisters here and he said come be fernand so the bishop took him to meet fernand a fernand is a paraplegic he has been in bed when i met him he had been in bed in bed for 50 years and he could move his head and he could talk and he can squeeze his thumb just enough to press a button to open to buzz the door to his one room apartment to let people in and out right but other than that he has to be cared for in every way he has to be fed he has to you know of course have his diapers changed all these things when mother Teresa came to meet him she was so impressed with him that she wanted her sisters to live close to him they had a long conversation of course through a translator there was a moment though in the conversation where there was a co-worker there and the co-worker looked around the room and she said fernand you don't have a crucifix in your room why don't you have a crucifix and mother Teresa got upset with the co-worker and she said don't you understand he's the crucifix and sure enough fernand does have a crucifix and he keeps it right on his chest right between his arms as a reminder of his vocation you see fernand wanted to be a priest but shortly before he was to enter the seminary he came down with this disease that paralyzed him and he spent the rest of his life in bed but when I met him he said I believe I've saved more souls on this bed than I would have as a priest and he believed that his own life was an offering for the salvation of the world when I would go and visit him I got to visit him maybe three or four times we would have mass right there in his room so we bring a mass kid and we'd set up a little table and then the sisters they would take that crucifix off of fernand's chest and they would put it on the altar and it would become the crucifix for that mass and it always struck me as such a powerful example of what the mass really is about here's all fernand's suffering all those lonely nights all that frustration of not being able to move years poured into that cross and then that cross is placed on the altar and jesus' own sacrifice becomes present here and it becomes part of his sacrifice and it leads to the salvation of the world the last time I was with fernand I'd given him holy communion of course and we were just all sitting in silence after holy communion and finally I gave him the blessing and then at the end he said to me this line he said I'm just a man with all my weakness but I'm burning with love and honestly I thought of the burning bush and I thought of the burning heart of Jesus and I thought how I want to say that I want to be a man who can say that it's true I'm just a man with all my weakness but I've surrendered my life to him I've encountered him and he sent me on mission and I'm burning with love thank you for this