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Stewardship ReflectionsEucharistic Stewardship In October 2004, the annual conference of the International Catholic Stewardship Council was shortened by one day so that participants could flee the city and escape the wrath of Hurricane Ivan. At the last minute, Ivan veered to the east, leaving New Orleans untouched. One year later, New Orleans would not be so fortunate. The wrath of Hurricane Katrina tore through the city and the entire Gulf Coast region, leaving in its wake a degree of devastation previously unimaginable. In the aftermath of that devastation, Sunday Mass was cancelled for five weeks at the Cathedral of St. Louis. I was deeply moved when I read that news, for it was the first time in 217 years that the Mass was not offered in that holy place. Two hundred seventeen years might seem like a long time to many of us, and yet it represents just over one tenth of the number of years that the Holy Eucharist has been offered by the Church: offered in resplendent cathedrals and in humble village churches; offered in times of prosperity and order and in times of desolation and chaos; offered in sunlit city squares by the pope who loved to travel and in a dark, dank prison cell by the Vietnamese archbishop jailed for his Catholic faith; offered always in response to the most efficacious command ever uttered, “Do this in memory of me.” The Holy Eucharist is and always has been the very heart of the life of our Church; and the Holy Eucharist will remain the source and summit of the life and mission of the Church, the axis around which all else in the Church revolves, until the Lord gathers us to Himself and invites us to take our place at the everlasting banquet. It is not surprising that the bishops of the United States would teach about Eucharistic Stewardship in their 1992 pastoral letter on stewardship, Stewardship: A Disciple's Response (SDR). The bishops write that stewardship is:
What the bishops teach about Eucharistic Stewardship is verified in parishes by the striking correlation between great devotion to the Holy Eucharist and success in promoting stewardship. Also of note is the number of young Catholics pursuing vocations to the priesthood and religious life who cite participation in the practice of Perpetual Adoration as a key factor in their decision to enter seminary or a religious order. In the following pages, I more closely examine Eucharistic Stewardship. I will look at what the Pastoral Letter teaches us about the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and I will show how the teaching of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, affirms and reinforces the spirituality taught by our bishops and in the stewardship movement to which we are all so deeply committed. I will build upon the framework of three points that are emphasized in the Pastoral letter:
These themes— conversion, communion, and transformation —are the key features of Eucharistic Stewardship. Conversion The early chapters of the Gospels are filled with accounts of Jesus calling people to a new and abundant way of life. “Come follow me” are the words our Lord uses to beckon His disciples to a radical conversion, a true change of life. We can only imagine how radical that change was for St. Peter, who left his boat at the shore of the sea, never again to be captain of his own destiny. His decision to follow Jesus without counting the cost would define his very existence and inspire countless others to follow the Lord, and with Him, to find other shores. That call of the Lord is always personal and always urgent. The Lord did not post a notice inviting those interested in discipleship to attend an introductory meeting, nor did He offer part-time internships to those who thought discipleship might be an interesting career choice! Rather, He called each of His disciples by name and asked them for an immediate response to that call. From past ages to our day, His call remains personal and urgent. Our response to the Lord's call is a life of stewardship, a life marked with gratitude, responsibility and generosity, a life of intimating Jesus. For when we imitate Jesus, we are changed—we do in fact become more like Him, growing in holiness. To become more like Jesus, to be good stewards, we must first know Him, not know about Him mind you, but know Him. The Holy Eucharist is the “sign and agent” of that personal, in-depth knowledge of Jesus and His Church (SDR, Ch. 4, p. 35). It is through the Eucharist that true conversion, true change, occurs. It is through the Eucharist that one comes to deep, personal knowledge of the Lord, for it is there that the He says not only “Come follow Me,” but also “Abide in Me, find your rest in Me, make your dwelling in Me, as I have first made my dwelling in you.” Our conversion of heart, our life of good and faithful stewardship, can be accomplished not merely by our feeble efforts, but by His grace, His action of coming to meet us in the Eucharistic banquet. Like the disciples at Emmaus, we come to know Him in the breaking of the bread. (cf. Luke 24:13-35). St. Augustine, whose radical personal conversion is notable even among the communion of the saints, described the profound personal effect of the Holy Eucharist as he imagined the Lord speaking to him: “I am the food of grown men; grow, and you shall feed upon me; nor shall you change me, like the food of your flesh, into yourself, but you shall be changed into me” (from St. Augustine's Confessions, quoted in the Breviary on the Feast of St. Augustine, August 28). When we partake of the food of the Eucharistic banquet, that food does not change into us, rather we change into that food: the Body and Blood of Christ. “We are mysteriously transformed by it [into Christ Jesus]. ‘He draws us into Himself.'” ( Sacramentum Caritatis [SC] 70). As promoters and leaders of the stewardship movement, we do well to remember that this is the change to which the Lord calls His disciples: Not a partial change, not a superficial change, but a change of the whole person, a change to the core. We do not dabble in discipleship. Following Jesus is a full-time endeavor. There are no half measures when it comes to holiness. Likewise, stewardship is not about a portion or a percentage. Stewardship cannot be reduced to the number of hours given in community service, nor can it be expressed merely as a percentage of dollars given in the offertory. Stewardship is a way of life. Good leaders in the stewardship movement call people to a new way of seeing things, a new way of life. They echo the words of the greatest commandment in calling others to “love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” They call individuals to a way of following Jesus that leads to the joy of knowing Him personally and profoundly, an experience that is infinitely more valuable than silver or gold. Conversion and Communion When we come to know Jesus we are, in that very fact, drawn into the communion of the Body of Christ, the Church. Our relationships with one another within the Church are not accidental, nor are they optional. The unity of the body is not the result of our efforts, as if the Church is simply an agreement between members of the same club. Rather, we are fashioned and made, joint, sinew, and marrow, into the Body of Christ, all through the outpouring of the Lord's divine love on the cross. Let's consider the scene at the crucifixion, as described by St. John: “When they came to Jesus, and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs, but one soldier thrust his lance into His side, and immediately blood and water flowed out” (John 19:33,34). The image of blood and water flowing from the side of Christ is a sacramental image, for from the side of Christ come forth the sacraments. The water signifies the waters of baptism, through which we become members of the Church. The blood signifies—and is—the Holy Eucharist, through which we are nourished and strengthened throughout our lives as members of the Body of Christ. As the first woman, Eve, was fashioned from the side of the first man, Adam, so too is the Bride of Christ, the Church, born from His pierced side. The existence of Church is not accidental, but essential in God's plan for the redemption of the human race. The Church is born from and sustained by the outpouring of the love of the Lord—the greatest love the world has ever known—love, charity, caritas . In his encyclical Deus Caritas Est (“God is Love”), our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI says so beautifully, “The Eucharist draws us into Jesus' act of self-oblation [His Sacrifice]. More than just statically receiving the incarnate Logos [the Lord], we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving.” The marriage of Christ and His Bride, the Church, is the “sharing in Jesus' self-gift, [the] sharing in His body and blood.” (DCE 13). The Pope goes on to say, “ Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom He gives Himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to Him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, His own. Communion draws me out of myself toward Him, and thus also toward unity with all Christians….Love of God and love of neighbor are now truly united: God incarnate draws us all to Himself” (DCE 14). In other words, we receive the Holy Eucharist as stewards. We are recipients of a great gift, in fact the greatest gift we could ever receive, the gift of the very Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ. The Holy Eucharist is the gift that changes us dramatically—drawing us out of ourselves and into communion with the Body of Christ. Furthermore, the gift of the Holy Eucharist gives us what we need as we are drawn out of ourselves and embrace our mission of service and evangelization, enkindling within our hearts the fire of God's love, the fire that has the power to renew the face of the earth. “The glory and the boast of Christian stewards lie in mirroring, however poorly, the stewardship of Jesus Christ, who gave and still continues to give all He has and is, in order to be faithful to God's will and carry through to completion His redemptive stewardship of human beings and their world” (SDR, Ch. 4, p. 35). The task for those who teach and promote stewardship as a way of life is to help others to understand better the meaning of the Holy Eucharist—the true meaning. This is a task that extends far beyond the Stewardship Office! All in ministry, all in teaching, all in leadership must be committed to this task. We are all too familiar with the infamous 1992 Gallup poll statistic that purported to show that a shocking two of out of three Catholics no longer believed in Christ's Real Presence in the Eucharist. Whether that particular survey has merit is not beyond dispute. Still, many of us cringe when we witness irreverence or disregard for the Blessed Sacrament. We cringe because of the poor stewardship being exercised for so great a gift. If belief has diminished in the real and substantial presence of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, so too has the consciousness that the Mass is a sacrifice. To be sure, the Mass is a banquet, but a sacrificial banquet, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the means by which the Lord's perfect sacrifice on Calvary is perpetuated. And that perfect sacrifice of Calvary is perpetuated upon the altars of the Church around the world— altars , not mere tables, but altars where the Lord Jesus is, according to the language of the liturgy, all at the same time the priest, the victim, and the altar of sacrifice. I make this point not as a call for an increase in Eucharistic piety (although that would not at all be a bad thing), but to remind us that the bishops have a vision of the power of stewardship to renew the Church—and that renewal is directly dependent upon our awareness and our participation in the sacrifice of the Mass. The sacrifice of Jesus, His side pierced upon the cross, is the starting point for Deus Caritas Est, for here, says the Pope, is love in its most radical form. “[Here] our definition of love must begin. In this contemplation the Christian discovers the path along which his life and love must move” (DCE 12). Unless our presentation of stewardship is grounded in the true meaning of the Eucharist as sacrifice it remains a fragmented presentation. It is but well-intentioned moralizing about supporting the needs of the Church, with everyone recruited to do his or her fair share. But when we help others to understand better the true meaning of the Holy Eucharist, we help them to bridge the gap between ritual and life, between the outpouring of God's love upon the cross and the living out of our daily lives, between the beautiful theology and spirituality of the Church and the practical stewardship to which we are called, especially in reaching out to the poor and less fortunate. In drawing near to and receiving in Holy Communion the sacred Body and Blood of Christ, we, as a Church of stewards, can carry out the Lord's will for the transformation of the world. Through the Holy Eucharist, the steward can be Christ's body here on earth and bring the light of Christ into a world that is too often in darkness. As the words attributed to St. Teresa of Avila remind us, “Christ has no body here on earth now but yours. Conversion, Communion, and Transformation One month ago, on the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Pope Benedict preached on the colorful first reading of the day, the account from the Book of Revelation in which the seemingly invincible dragon prepares to devour the woman, apparently defenseless. The pope suggested that although the author of the Book of Revelation was calling to mind the Emperor Nero, the persecutor of the Church, the dragon can also represent other threats that rear their evil heads against the Church at various moments in history: the ostensibly boundless power of the Nazis and later the Communists, those forces of the twentieth century that evoke the memory of anti-Christian dictatorships throughout time. The dragon in the Book of Revelation seems unstoppable, more than powerful enough to devour the woman and her offspring, Christ and the Church. And yet in the end, love proves to be more powerful than hate, hope greater than despair, faith stronger than doubt. “Today…,” the pope writes, “the dragon exists in new and different ways. It exists in the form of materialistic ideologies that tell us it is absurd to think of God; it is absurd to observe God's commandments: they are a leftover from a time past. Life is only worth living for its own sake. Take everything we can get in this brief moment of life. Consumerism, selfishness, and entertainment alone are worthwhile. This is life. This is how we must live. And once again, it seems absurd, impossible to oppose this dominant mindset with all its media and propagandist power” (Homily, 8-15-07). These words of Pope Benedict bear a remarkable likeness to those of our bishops who proposed stewardship as a remedy for the seductive, powerful influences of our culture of “isms:” materialism, hedonism, individualism, and consumerism—tendencies that have the effect of privatizing faith, pushing it to the margins of society, “confining it to people's hearts or, at best, their homes, while excluding it from the marketplace of ideas where social policy is formed and men and women acquire their view of life and its meaning” (SDR, Introduction, p.5). Five years ago last week one of my heroes died. Exactly five years to the date of his death, as canon law provides, his cause for canonization was opened in Rome . I speak of the late Cardinal Francis Nguy?n van Thu?n. Servant of God Cardinal van Thu?n was arrested by the Communists shortly after his installation as Archbishop of Saigon in 1975. He was imprisoned for the next thirteen years, nine of which would be spent in solitary confinement. Eventually he was exiled from Vietnam and he would spend the rest of his years in Rome . The cardinal tells us that upon his imprisonment, “a tormenting question dominated my thoughts, ‘Will I be able to celebrate the Eucharist?' … The next day, I was permitted to write to my people” in order to ask for personal items such as toothpaste and clothing. He wrote, “Please send me a little wine as medicine for my stomachache.” The faithful knew exactly what he meant. They filled a medicine bottle with altar wine and concealed hosts within a flashlight to protect them against humidity. The Communist guard who inspected the package found the medicine bottle and asked the cardinal, “Do you have a stomachache?” “Yes,” he responded. “Here is some medicine for you.” That evening, after lights out, just as he would do every night for the next 13 years, the cardinal recited the prayers of the Mass from memory while lying on his mat, with a fraction of a host in one hand and in the other three drops of wine mixed with one drop of water. He would write, “Those were the most beautiful Masses of my life.” For it was in these Masses that “I had the opportunity to extend my hands and nail myself to the cross with Jesus, to drink with him the bitter chalice. Each day in reciting the words of consecration, I confirmed with all my heart and soul a new pact, an eternal pact between Jesus and me through his blood mixed with mine…. Thus, in prison, I felt beating within my heart the same heart of Christ. I felt that my life was his life and his was mine.” Very quickly the news spread among the prisoners that the archbishop of Saigon was with them, and so they arranged for the Catholic prisoners to sleep on the mats near his. The cardinal would distribute Holy Communion to the prisoners under the mosquito net that now served as his cathedral. The faith of the Catholic prisoners grew strong. Many who were lukewarm in their faith grew in fervor and devotion. Even non-Catholics came to the faith and sought instruction and baptism. All through the power of the Holy Eucharist. The prisoners wanted to adore the Blessed Sacrament but, of course, there was no chapel, not even a tabernacle. So the cardinal had a fellow prisoner fashion a rice-paper envelope to hold the Blessed Sacrament so that one of the prisoners could carry it in his pocket throughout the day. Wherever that prisoner went, the others knew that it was the Lord Jesus who was walking in their midst. Through the power of the Holy Eucharist, the darkness of the prison camp was scattered by the Pascal Light of Christ. (I once told this story to a group of deacons of the Archdiocese of Mobile, Alabama. In the back row were two deacons from Vietnam . I asked them after the talk if they had ever heard of Cardinal van Thu?n. One of the deacons said with great delight, “I am from Saigon . He was my archbishop.” Then he nudged the other deacon, a rather shy man, who said ever so humbly, “I once walked the prison grounds in Saigon , carrying in my pocket a rice paper envelope containing the Most Blessed Sacrament.”) Conversion, Communion and Transformation: the three key features of Eucharistic Stewardship. As we, in our day, ponder the seemingly insurmountable odds facing the Church as she strives to carry out her mission of service and evangelization, I suggest that we never lose hope in the power of the Holy Eucharist, and that we trust in the wisdom of the bishops who see the great potential of renewal through Eucharistic Stewardship. And now that he has been named a Servant of God, I commend to your personal prayer the practice of asking the intercession of Cardinal van Thu?n, just as in our public prayer we ask the intercession of all the saints, especially Our Lady, the woman whose faith proves stronger than the power of the dragon, and whose life serves as the most beautiful model of Eucharistic Stewardship. |
| Marian College Center for Catholic Stewardship |