 It is such a joy to be with you this morning, especially in the afterglow of the sacred liturgy. I'm honored to have these last minutes with you of this conference, these last 300 minutes. Right, Petrach? No, not 300. Just a little bit about my background, I grew up with a father who was a teacher and a mother who worked in high school administration. My parents insisted that I go to their high school in order to keep me out of trouble. And that was somewhat successful. I remember the day, though, where I would drive with them every day to school, and we were in a terrible argument that morning. And when I arrived and I started walking to my first class, one of my friends came up and said, hey, do you want a ditch class? And I had never skipped class before, but this was a rough morning so far. And I thought, yeah, I do want a ditch class. So we totally rebelled. I think we went to Arizona State University and just sat there and watched cool college students for 40 minutes, and then we got back in the car and drove back to school. Well, I go to my second period class, and about 10 minutes into the class, a runner comes from the attendance office where my mom works. And they gave a little note to the teacher, and the teacher said, James, you need to go to the office. And I was walking to the office, really not happy, because so many of my friends skip class, and do they get called to the office immediately? No, they don't, but my mom works in the administration. And so I go to my mom's office and knock on the door, and she gets up, and she comes and she closes the door, and she turns to me, and she starts crying, and she says, I'm so sorry for the argument this morning. And I start crying and say, I ditched. When I graduated from high school, so I'm around teachers, you know, when I graduated from high school, my pastor invited me to become the youth minister with zero experience, no education, no formation whatsoever, but a heart that had a real zeal for the Lord. And I think from an early age, I learned to be aware of my weakness and to turn to the Lord and operate out of that weakness with a desire for Him. But I was a youth minister for four years in the Diocese of Phoenix, and the high experience of those years was World Youth Day in 1993. Was anybody else there? Okay, we had not a whole lot of people. World Youth Day in Denver, Colorado in 1993. It was both the high and the low experience of my time as youth minister. It was the high experience, because we were with St. John Paul II at World Youth Day, which brought such renewal to the church here in the United States. And the high moment was during the vigil when he came and spoke to the young people. We were in an area of Cherry Creek State Park where we couldn't hear anything. So I pulled out of my little bag a Walkman. Do you remember those? I latched it onto my belt and I had the headphones on and I found a frequency where I could hear what he was saying. And I was hearing and then speaking to those in my group, the words of St. John Paul II. So I was passing on to them what I myself was receiving, which is a very catechetical idea, right? So it was beautiful to do that. The low experience at World Youth Day for me was what happened immediately after. After the mass, there's this massive humanity moving to buses. And we had two buses of teens and we got everybody on the buses and we drove to a hotel. We stayed at a hotel because nobody got any sleep the night before. We went to the hotel and I just crashed on the bed. And about 10 minutes later, there's a frantic knock on my door and I opened the door and one of my young adult leaders says, James, you need to turn on Channel 3 right now. And I said, okay, and I turned on Channel 3 and there was one of our teens being interviewed about World Youth Day and she was still back at Cherry Creek State Park. I left her there. So, you know, a 52-year-old me likes to look back at 21-year-old me and just shake his head every once in a while. Hasn't this conference been beautiful? I want to thank you for whatever sacrifices you've undertaken to be here and to give our Lord this time. After having spent time in the presence of our Eucharistic Lord and perhaps after receiving him, we wanted to end this conference with this question. How is Jesus in the Eucharist the source of our revival as individuals and also as a church? Now, some of you come from parishes where there is extraordinary music and exhortative preaching and a strong Catholic community that is present within your parish. And you might be tempted to say that the way that the liturgy revives is through the music and through the preaching and through the faith life of the community. And there's no question at all that these are such a blessing when they are in place. And we have to give our very best to the music and the preaching and the development of authentic Christian community. But I want to point out that these are not the deepest reasons why the liturgy revives. These are not the deepest reasons why conversion is possible in the context of the Mass because we know that there might be no music or the music might be grating on your ears or there may be no homily and yet something very profound happens. There are many ways that the liturgy revives us. I want to focus this morning on the greatest way. We are used to as catechists talking about what or better who the Eucharist is. What I want to consider with you this morning is a very different question. And the question is why did our Lord give Himself to us in the Eucharist? Why did He give us this greatest of gifts? And as we consider this, I think we're going to come to better understand just how deeply we are loved by God. I want to share some insights with you this morning from an excellent sacramental theologian who teaches at the Seminary in St. Louis. His name is Dr. Lawrence Feingold. And in this book that he wrote, the clicker is not working. Try it again. Okay, here we go. If you are looking for a book recommendation during this time of Eucharistic revival, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It's called The Eucharist Mystery of Present Sacrifice and Communion by Dr. Lawrence Feingold. It's deep, it's beautiful, and it's very accessible. But I want to share with you three reasons that he identifies and why Jesus gave us the Eucharist, and each of them has to do with love. First, through the Eucharist, our Lord Jesus seeks to dwell intimately with His beloved. When we love someone, we want to spend time with them. A man and a woman who wishes to get married makes a lifetime commitment to dwell intimately with their beloved. I think one of the most shocking and beautiful passages from Scripture is found in Isaiah 62 verse 5, where we read, So what kind of a relationship does God want to have with each one of us? The Scriptures tell us that God wants to marry us. He takes that much delight in you, and He wants to be that close to you. Jesus wants to dwell intimately with you, His beloved, and the Blessed Eucharist is his chosen way of doing this. And so the Eucharist is, first and foremost, a gift of love. And when we receive the Eucharist, God himself is asking, Will you dwell with me as I want to dwell with you? Dr. Feingold makes two really, really interesting points about this. Number one, this way that Jesus chooses to be present to us after His ascension into heaven is actually better than the way that He was present with us when He walked the earth. Why? Why would I say such a thing? Well, my kids, when they were younger, you know, before they became teenagers, my kids would ask me every once in a while, Dad, if you could live at any time in history and meet one historical figure, who would you want to meet? And then they would roll their eyes and say, Don't say Jesus, because they knew what I was going to say. Well, Feingold says that it's actually better now than it was when He walked the earth. And that's because now our Lord is not limited by time and space. He is able to be present anywhere where there is a priest. The second point that I want to make is something of an analogy. When we human beings die, we leave things to those that we love as a sign of our love and a sign of our presence. I was visiting my mom and dad recently. They live in Washington State. And my mom sat me down, my 82-year-old mom. Oh, I'm not supposed to say her age, am I? This is not being recorded. I think this is being recorded. Okay, we will not be sharing this video with my mom. So my mom sat down with me on the couch just a little while ago. And she said, Do you want that clock that was hanging on the wall when I die? And, you know, it just felt awkward. And I said, Okay. And then she pulled out her rosary that her mother gave her in the 1940s. And she said, Do you want my rosary when I die? And, you know, I found myself wanting to say, I don't want your stuff. I just want you. I want to be with you. But doing this, I figured out, was really important to her because she wanted these things that were special to her to be a reminder of her when she's gone. Well, this is a helpful analogy. Dr. Feingold says this, When people die, they leave a testament to their loved ones. They may leave certain reminders of their presence such as letters, pictures, heirlooms, or their estate. On the night before his passion, Christ also wished to leave a testament to his loved ones. As God, however, he was not limited in his choices. He left a testament that could not be outdone by any other for he elected to leave to his bride, the church, nothing less than himself. And so he gives himself to the church. And he is truly present in every Catholic church in the world, and he does this out of love. The first time that I realized this, I was 14 years old. And our pastor, I was just any other typical 14-year-old, I was bored at Mass. I wasn't very interested. But on Palm Sunday, I went to Mass with my family. And the pastor gave an impassioned invitation to the parish to come participate in the Triduum Liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. And there was a tone in his voice. There was something in his words that really drew me. And I decided, 15-year-old me decided, I'm going to go to Holy Thursday Mass. And so my Holy Thursday rolled around and I went to Mass. I went by myself. I sat in the very back of the church. And I don't know if the music was beautiful. And I was with people who really believed. And the pastor prayed the Mass with such an intentness that when he lifted up the host and said, this is my body, I truly was able to see for the first time who this was. And I recognized as I was going to receive communion that this was our Lord Jesus and he was giving himself to us as a gift. And I accepted this gift. And after Mass, at the conclusion, there was a Eucharistic procession and then adoration that night. And I stayed in adoration because I recognized that I needed to respond in some way to this gift. And so my conversion, my initial awakening to the beauty and the power of God happened not on a retreat or at a youth conference but in the context of the sacred liturgy. And this set the trajectory for the rest of my life. The second reason why our Lord Jesus gives himself in the Eucharist and we should brace ourselves here, you might want to sit down for this one. Our Lord Jesus gives to his bride, not just himself, but the very act of his self-sacrificial love. Now Bishop Cousins alluded to this last night and I was writing feverishly as he was speaking. Bishop Cousins put it this way. He said that Jesus wanted this moment on the cross, this moment of perfect worship to the Father. He wanted this moment to be present throughout time. He wanted you and me to be able to enter into this moment of perfect worship. And so when we speak of Jesus in the context of the liturgy, being present in the Eucharist, what do we mean? Is this baby Jesus? Who's present? Is this teenage Jesus? It's something more profound. In the context of the liturgy, Jesus is present to us in the very act of laying down his life for his friends. Fine Gold puts it this way if we can flip the slide. Dr. Fine Gold says this. It's not working. Okay, there we go. Thank you. Hint, hint, wink, wink. Fine Gold puts it this way. In the Eucharist Christ gives to his bride the very act by which he poured out his life for her to cleanse and sanctify her by meriting the remission of sins. In other words, Christ willed to give a testament to his bride that would be not only his living presence, but also the continued presence of the very act by which he showed himself as the supreme lover of our souls. And so he left to his loved ones a perfect token of his love, giving to us sacramentally the very act by which he died for our sins. And this is the Eucharist. Now we know theologically from the Catechism of the Catholic Church that the liturgy, the language that's used is the liturgy makes present the Paschal Mystery, right? The liturgy represents the Paschal Mystery. So this event that happened 2000 years ago in history is, Sophia Cavalletti talks about it being lifted out sacramentally of its historical moment and made present to people in every place and in every time. Well, we shouldn't gloss over what this means that this event is made present. When we come to the Eucharistic Liturgy, we approach Jesus in the most profound and sacred act of laying down his life for his friends. Do you remember the woman with the hemorrhage in the Gospel of Mark? Well, I ask you this. If touching just the hem of his garment as he walked through the crowd was enough to heal the woman with this internal hemorrhage, what can happen to you and me when we touch the event of his self-giving love on the cross? And this is exactly what is possible for us in the Mass. And so out of love for us, the extraordinary action of Christ laying down his life in perfect worship of the Father and for the salvation of the world, this act is made present. What happened in the Gospels at the moment of our Lord's death on the cross? There were shockwaves that went through the natural order. There was an earthquake, the Gospel writers tell us. The curtain in the sanctuary was torn in two. And so this act of our Lord Jesus offering his life literally shook the world. So I ask you again, what can happen in each one of us individually and what can happen in our broken church, which is so in need of our Lord? What can happen? I want to give a very, very poor analogy here. What happens in you when you are around really generous people? Does anything change within you when you're around real heroic generosity? I had this extraordinary experience last summer where I taught a course here on campus with six Dominican sisters. Six just beautiful brides of Christ. And it was two and a half hours this course every day that I got to spend with them. And after that class, after the two and a half hours, I would walk out with a real halo around my head that lasted for about 25 minutes. But something changed within me as I was around these sisters in our Lord who loved Jesus so much. So that can happen to us when we're around people who are generous and kind and loving. What happens when we touch divine generosity itself? What can happen to you? What can happen for you? What can happen in you? What can happen through you? And so the Eucharist is our lifelong gift from God allowing us to enter into that moment of sacrifice so that we might be changed. Finally, the third reason that Fine Gold gives for why our Lord gives us the Eucharist is this. So that he can enter into communion with us. And this communion with Jesus brings us objectively into communion with our loving Father through the Holy Spirit. And so Fine Gold puts it this way. He writes, finally, finally, spousal love seeks not only to dwell with the beloved, that's the first reason, and to sacrifice for the beloved, this is the second reason, but through self-sacrifice to enter into the most intimate union with the beloved. The Eucharist makes possible this most intimate union through Holy Communion. By the way, when we call it communion, when we call the Eucharist communion, we are calling it by its effect. At the Last Supper, our Lord Jesus gave us the most profound analogy for what the Eucharist accomplishes. He wrote, I'm sorry, he wrote. He said, I am the vine, and you are the branches, and whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit. Because apart from me, you can do nothing. So what is the disciples' relationship to God in Christ? It's not just Creator to creature. It's not just teacher to student. But in Christ, we become branches grafted onto the vine who is Jesus. We are given life by the sap of divine grace that flows from the vine into each of the branches, making each of the branches alive and very possibly fruitful. Brothers and sisters, if we dwell with this, so he gave that image at the Last Supper in order to emphasize what happens in receiving the Eucharist. If we really dwell with this, this truth that our Lord wants to be in union with us, it's immensely beautiful and it's deeply profoundly shocking. God loves you so much that he wants to be eternally in communion with you. You are that valuable and that precious to him. And this, brothers and sisters, is grounds for deep joy because the Eucharist gives us a foretaste of heaven. So I'm a fan of the Far Side cartoons. I don't know if you are as well. This is one of my favorites. And let me just tell you that this is not what heaven is going to be, right? Living in isolation and we're bored looking for something to do. The Catechism tells us that we enter into the eternal exchange of love in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the Scriptures tell us, I is not seen, ear is not heard, nor is it entered into the human heart what God has prepared for those who love him. And what he has prepared for us is an eternity of loving union with him and with all of the members of the body of Christ. St. Augustine in his commentary on John 15.5 wrote this, if you have any sense remaining. Okay, that is a great way to start a sentence. If you have any sense remaining, let your hair stand on end for whoever imagines that he is bearing fruit of himself is not in the vine. And he who is not in the vine is not in Christ. And he that is not in Christ is not a Christian. Such are the ocean depths into which you have plunged, Augustine wrote. A few years ago at a Bosco conference, Dr. Solom gave one of these general sessions. And in that general session he said that the most important preposition in the Catholic vocabulary is the preposition in. Because the Christian life isn't just following Jesus. He is not merely our model for the Christian life. But through the waters of baptism and through the sacramental life of the church, we live in Christ so that we might live from Christ. And this is exactly what the world needs today. So what are the three reasons? He wants to remain present with us. And what a consolation that is. Number two, he wants to make ever present to us the event of his paschal sacrifice as the source for the world's renewal. And number three, most profoundly, he wants to enter into intimate communion with us. So in these ways, and in many others, the Eucharist is meant to be a catalyst for revival. For each one of us individually, every time that we go to Mass, and for the church living through these very challenging days. Now Bishop Cousins last night talked about the stages of encounter. And the last stage of encounter is the recognition that we are being invited to follow him in a new way of living. I want to talk about something difficult now. So I think we can take deep consolation from why our Lord wants to give us the Eucharist. It's a great consolation, but I want to be really clear, and I'm preaching as much to myself as anyone in this room, receiving the Eucharist also places demands upon us. There is a responsibility that becomes more significant as we receive the Eucharist. And so the way that Bishop Cousins explained it again is that we are invited to follow him in a new way of life. Now I want to say that this great truth has in my estimation not been featured prominently in at least my experience of being catechized and having the gospel preached very frequently. Matthew chapter 18 verses 21 to 35 give us a key here when we're thinking about what it means to be in union with Jesus. What does this mean and what does this mean for how I live? Matthew 18 verses 21 to 35 tells the story that you're very familiar with of the servant who owed a great debt to his master and is astoundingly forgiven the entire debt, but then we know what happens in this story. When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount and he seized him and started to choke him demanding payback what you owe and falling to his knees his fellow servant begged him be patient with me and I will pay you back, but he refused. Instead he had him put in prison until he paid back the debt. Verse 31, now when his fellow servant saw what had happened they were deeply disturbed and they went to their master and they reported the whole affair. Well, brothers and sisters, why were they deeply disturbed? It's because his actions were radically, violently inconsistent, incoherent with the tremendous gift that he had just been given of mercy. There was a profound dissonance between what he had just received and now how he was treating another person. And so we learn here that with mercy comes the responsibility to be merciful and we can say now with the Eucharist that with union with Jesus comes a responsibility to live in a new way. And so receiving the Eucharist has serious, very real implications for how we live our lives outside of the liturgy because our Lord expects fruit. Receiving the Eucharist sets in motion a new moment, a new process of continuing conversion. But that doesn't happen automatically, does it? It doesn't happen magically. We individually must freely respond with the desire to align our lives and the way that we think and the way that we see and the way that we live to align ourselves more and more and more with our Lord Jesus and how he sees and thinks and lives. So this is the challenge. Living in communion with Jesus must change us. Amen to that. Another way to say it is this. Receiving the Eucharist is not merely for my own sanctification, for my own consolation so that I might go to heaven one day. It's not only about that. But when we receive our Lord and the Eucharist, we are entering into communion with him and that means that his mission becomes our mission by virtue of the reality of this communion that we enjoy with him. And that's because this is real. This is a real union that we are invited into. We could use an analogy here. In our human relationships, when we are loved by another person in a sacrificial way, again, something opens up within us or something ought to open up within us. Now let me give you a really radical example of this. We are very likely familiar with the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe and how he died. That he was a Franciscan priest in Auschwitz. There was a prison escape and the Nazis lined up all of the prisoners as they usually would and they randomly selected a number of men who would be starved in a starvation chamber. A horrific death. One of those men was a married man whose wife was still alive. And he begged for his life. And Father Kolbe stood forward and offered to take his place. Well, I'm sure that if St. Maximilian Kolbe were here, he would tell us that it was on account of his sacramental life that he was capable of this kind of love. A number of years ago when I was in Phoenix, this would have been right around 1990, I had a friend call me on the phone and he knew that I had a devotion to St. Maximilian Kolbe and he said, James, there's a speaker coming to our parish tonight to talk about Father Kolbe and you should come. And I had plans to go see a movie that night and I said, no, I can't do it, sorry. Well, this remains one of the deepest regrets of my life because do you know who was in Phoenix, Arizona in 1990 to talk about St. Maximilian Kolbe, the man that Father Kolbe died for? Who went on to spend the rest of his life sharing with people this extraordinary sacrifice that was made on his behalf. So this happened, right? When we experience loving self-sacrifice, it changes something within us. So what happens when we encounter immeasurable, perfect, complete and total love in receiving the Eucharist? So much more than what Father Kolbe was able to offer to Francis that day. Well, this love is meant to change us because receiving the Eucharist is meant to be fruitful. There is a call to conversion that happens. There's Father Kolbe. Does anybody know who this is? This is St. Thomas Moore. And we know about St. Thomas Moore. St. Thomas Moore shows us especially in his last days what it means, what it looks like to cooperate with grace. To cooperate with sacramental grace so that there's a change. And what I love about St. Thomas Moore is, look, this conversion isn't easy. And it takes, cooperating with grace is all gift from God, but it requires all that we have. And the change and the conversion that we're talking about happens very frequently over time, gradually and in stages. So St. Thomas Moore, as you know, was condemned to death by the King of England who he served faithfully. And in his last days, in the days between his sentencing and his execution, he wrote a prayer. And I'd invite you to listen with me to the words of this prayer that he composed in prison because it reveals something of what it looks like to cooperate with grace. So St. Thomas Moore wrote, Almighty God, have mercy on all that bear me evil will and would harm me. Apparently these words are admirable to us, yes? They reflect very clearly the final act of forgiveness that we see in our Lord from the cross. But Thomas Moore goes further than this. He goes on and by such easy, easy, tender and merciful means that your infinite wisdom can best devise, grant that their faults, the faults of his enemies and mine, may both be amended and redressed and make us saved souls in heaven together where we may ever live and love together with you and your blessed saints. Wow! So in this prayer, he first acknowledges his own need for mercy and for his own faults to be corrected and healed. But then did you hear it? Do you see it here? He goes on to ask God to do the exact same things for his enemies, for those who are intending him evil so that together with his enemies they might enjoy eternal life with God and the saints in heaven. This is St. Thomas Moore's prayer amidst injustice and vitriol, knowing that his enemies are bringing about his ruin and great suffering and loss in his family. But then here's the key. He finishes, Things, good Lord, that I pray for, give me the grace to labor for. He writes, St. Thomas Moore, like every other saint, was not born with a halo. But it's a process. And I love this so much because of how it reveals the importance of cooperating with the power and the grace that God brings into our lives through the sacraments. I thought you might like to see this picture from a page in his prayer book. And this is found in an extraordinary book on the saint called St. Thomas Moore, A Portrait of Courage. And I don't know if you can see it or not, but if you look at the very top of the page, you can see St. Thomas Moore's own handwriting. And he writes, To think my most enemies, my best friends, he writes. And then he concludes at the bottom of the page, For the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favor as they did him with their malice and hatred. So St. Thomas Moore understood that receiving the Eucharist has implications. And he frequented the sacraments throughout his life. And he shows us, I think, very, very concretely in an eminently human way what it means for each of us to receive grace and then to work to cooperate with that grace. How about St. Teresa of Calcutta? Bishop Cousin stole my picture of her, not the other way around. How about St. Teresa of Calcutta? Would you say that she did a little bit of good with her life? Well, I'm confident that if she were here, she would say that the only good that she was able to do in her life was because of Jesus. And this woman every morning adored our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and went to Mass before going out on the streets. Well, we can look at Mother Teresa and say, I mean, she must have really, really felt close to God throughout her life in order to do what she did, right? Well, if you were to read her spiritual diaries that were published after her death, the thing that was most shocking to the world is that she spent many, many years before her death in a profound spiritual darkness where she felt interiorly the absence of God in her life. And so we can't say that in the life of someone like Mother Teresa, it's just that she was overwhelmed with feelings of closeness to God. Those feelings of closeness are not an indication of the presence of grace, but the Eucharist changed her and gave her the power to love selflessly those who were most in need of it even when she didn't feel the love of God. And so, brothers and sisters, this is why the church refers to the Eucharist as the summit and the font of the church's life. It is the summit. It is the high point experience within Catholicism where we are immersed in the love of Jesus for which our hearts ache. This is the maximum encounter that is possible with God, receiving him in Holy Communion. And it is also the font, the source of the Christian life. What does it look like? What would it look like if we intentionally live from this Eucharistic encounter? And this is what all of us are hoping and praying for through this time of revival, is that it's not merely a time where the church in the United States is consoled by our closeness to Jesus, but where we are sent out in mission. I want to end with this image. Do we have any fans of St. John Viani in the room? The patron saint of parish priests. St. John Viani, as you know, was a priest. Then he was a catechist. Then he gave catechesis in his little parish church in ours. And many, many people came to hear him teach. His last catechesis happened when he was debilitated with illness. And they carried him into the church on a stretcher. And the church was packed. And Father John Viani, with his ebbing strength, sat up in the stretcher. And he had no ability to speak. And with tears streaming down his eyes, he repeatedly pointed to the tabernacle. Until he couldn't any longer. And he laid down and they carried him out. Well, brothers and sisters, I believe this to be the preeminent image for what we do as catechesis in the 21st century. As we point our students to Jesus in the Eucharist, we give witness to who the Eucharist is and why our Lord gives Himself to us in the Eucharist. And we give witness to what it looks like to live our lives in communion with our Lord. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. God our loving Father, we give you thanks and praise for this extraordinary gift of your Son, Jesus. And we thank you for the Holy Spirit who makes this gift present to us in the context of the Mass. And I pray for each one of us here that during this time of Eucharistic revival, we might more and more be able to draw close to the heart of Jesus in the Eucharist to allow him to love us so that we might understand where our true dignity and value comes from so that we might be able to live from this encounter to the great good of those around us and to the great good of the world. I thank you for the good work that you were doing in my brothers and sisters and we pray that you would bring this good work to completion. All glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be a world without end. Amen. St. John Viani. Thank you. God bless you.