By Shawna Hanson
Eucharistic Revival Post

January marked the halfway point of both this Parish Year of the National Eucharistic Revival and the Revival itself. This spring, the parish year will culminate with the National Eucharistic Procession where the Eucharist will be carried from four points in the United States over 60 days and meet on July 17, the opening night of the National Eucharistic Congress. Fifty thousand Catholics are expected to participate in the four-day Congress, which will feature nationally known speakers, Mass, Adoration, entertainment opportunities, and more. This pivotal event in the life of the Church in the United States will launch the third year of the Revival – the Year of Missionary Sending. Recently, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops outlined this third year of the Revival. Like the first two years, this coming year will offer us four invitations to grow closer to Jesus and follow Him more faithfully. These invitations have been previewed as:

• Eucharistic Encounter — an invitation to continue to make time to encounter Christ through the Eucharist.
• Eucharistic Identity — an invitation to embrace our deepest identity as beloved children of the Father, in our relationship with Christ through the Eucharist.
• Eucharistic Life — an invitation to be strengthened and renewed in our Christian identity through the Eucharist; as we love Christ more our lives are configured to His.
• Eucharistic Mission — an invitation to those who have encountered Christ, whose identity has been configured to him, to go out on mission to the world, evangelizing and bringing Christ’s love to all, especially those most in need of his mercy.

The two major movements being encouraged in the coming year are to live each of these invitations more deeply and to “walk with one.” In embracing the movement to “walk with one” missionary disciples commit to (1) identify someone in need, (2) to intercede for that person, (3) to include them in our lives and in our faith, (4) to invite them to become disciples, deepen their commitment to Christ or to embrace faith for the first time.

I recently heard evangelization defined simply as one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. This put in my mind the famous line of St. Augustine, “Man is a beggar before God.” Together they echo the spiritual truths that these four invitations attempt to capture; namely that God, by His nature, gives. He is the source of all love, all goodness, all life, and all mercy. And He has designed us to receive. He desires to fill us, to give us life and give it to the full (cf. Jn 10:10). As the third invitation suggests, when we open ourselves to God, His life and His mercy, our lives become configured to His. And then, we too desire to give. We become beggars who have found bread and long to tell all those who are hungry where our hunger has been satisfied.

I am reminded of the great hero in our faith, St. Francis of Assisi. Praying in front of the crucifix in the church of San Damiano, he heard Jesus say, “Rebuild my church which is falling into ruin.” Faithful and obedient, and believing that Jesus meant the church building where he was, he immediately began begging for stones and other building materials to rebuild the church building. Later, he came to understand that God had a much bigger “construction project” in mind for him – that of rebuilding the whole church, the Body of Christ. I see the invitation placed before us in the coming year as similar. We are being asked to go into the village and return with one stone at a time to rebuild God’s church. In our case, as in St. Francis’, the call is for “living stones,” people, our brothers and sisters. The New Evangelization, as it has often been termed, will come to be when each of us commits to “walking with one” — identifying, interceding, including, and inviting one person to become a disciple of Jesus. Rebuilding the church one stone at a time is a long-term project. Like St. Francis’ call, it is bigger than any one person could possibly accomplish alone. But we don’t have to worry about that because we aren’t the only ones being called. And we aren’t the architects. God is. And He has this in hand. Let’s be a part of it. Let’s do our very small part in a very big plan. Bishop Peter, pray for us.