The Eucharist is my highway to heaven

Bishop Scott Bullock
Homily from the St. Carlo Acutis Catholic Student Center Gala Mass
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Rapid City
October 11, 2025

How is it that we know how to live the Gospel? What is our sure and certain standard on how to closely follow Jesus? Well, of course, look at the Scriptures, especially the Gospels and the teachings of St. Paul and the other writings of the New Testament, which are meant to direct us along the way of Christ. Or look at how our believers have practiced the faith over the centuries. What we call our tradition. Or look to see how a teaching, like what I’m doing right now or among the current leaders of our faith, presents the Gospel. Furthermore, look and see how we pray. How is it that we pray? That speaks of what we believe. 

But in a final estimation, another sure and certain way to know is to look at the lives of the saints and look at how they lived the Gospel. If we can pattern ourselves after their radiant example, we’ll be on a good path toward living the Gospel ourselves.

So, this evening I would like to suggest the great and radiant example of St. Carlo Acutis. As you probably know, the newly canonized saint of our Church was a young Italian teenager who lived really from 1991 through his death at the age of 15. He was actually born the same year I became a priest. He’s a new one. In many ways he was an ordinary teenager. He loved soccer, video games, computers, but above all, he loved Jesus and especially loved the Eucharist — what we’re doing here tonight. 

Famously St. Carlo Acutis said, “The Eucharist is my highway to heaven.” 

Not the local road. Not the unpaved back road. It’s the highway. It’s the quickest way to heaven. And when he speaks of heaven he does not mean only the place we go after our earthly journey is done because we trust that heaven begins now. God already opens up the true treasures of eternal life for us now in the Eucharist. 

St. Carlo understood something that we can often forget: that the Eucharist of course is much more than a mere symbol, but instead it’s the true presence of Jesus according to his promise. From the time he received his first holy Communion at the age of seven, St. Carlo went to daily Mass frequently and spent time in Eucharistic Adoration like we do here at the Cathedral. He famously again said, “When we face the sun we get a tan, but when we stand before Jesus in the Eucharist, we become saints.”

So, in as much as we want to become holy like the saints and holy as is our calling, we’ll want to come to the Eucharist. 

The famous French poet and novelist Leon Bloy said, “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”

What a precious gift we have been given, this gift of life and to squander it on anything other than shooting for holiness, shooting to live like the saints, is really a life wasted. Jesus gives us the way to become saints in the Eucharist we share. He gives us the way to live the fullness of life. He gives us the way to be like God. How can we settle for less? 

That gift of the Eucharist notably transformed St. Carlo’s life. It made him a kind, joyful, youth attentive to others — especially the poor and lonely. And furthermore, he wanted to use every skill possible to let others know about the gift of the Eucharist including his famous website where he recounted used his computer skills to create a website documenting Eucharistic miracles around the world. Perhaps you’ve noticed for some time the posters along the wall of our church. They’re his. He’s the one that provides that information. Because of the fact that the Eucharist turned him into a person full of joy, full of life, full of kindness, he teaches us that this holy banquet is a time to be filled with love so that we can share love. It’s preparing us to go and be Christ’s witnesses to the world.

Even as he was dying from leukemia at the age of 15, Carlo offered his suffering for the Church and particularly the Holy Father. He said, “To always be close to Jesus — that’s my life plan.”

This closeness to Jesus, this fullness of life, this foretaste of heaven, is Jesus’ plan for us as well. It only fails when we choose to not receive the gift of healing that is always the Eucharist and fail to see the gift of the Eucharist that is from God.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus meets 10 lepers that need healing and once restored to life by Christ only one, we are told, comes back with thanksgiving and humility. The Gospel says that he “falls on his face before Jesus and he thanks him.” 

For us too, how many times have we been healed by Christ? How many times have we been restored to life? How many times have we seen God’s mercy? So our response is to be like that of the good leper in the Gospel. To respond in faith by coming and prostrating ourselves, to kneel down before the Lord, like we do here at Mass and give thanks in the Eucharist — our perfect act of thanksgiving. 

For St. Carlo, the Eucharist was not just an act of mere devotion — it was a relationship that shaped his life. It was a relationship that made him a Saint. He shows us that holiness is indeed possible for everyone — our young as well as we who are to be young at heart. When we make the Eucharist this perfect act of thanksgiving, at the very center of our lives, the Gospel makes it clear we are obliged to frequently give thanks for the way the Lord has treated us. We see this in the example of St. Carlo Acutis, who teaches us how to live the Gospel by calling us to this great act of gratitude which is always prepared for us at this holy altar.