Throughout Lent, we have been proposing reflection questions for you to consider while watching the episodes of Presence on the FORMED online platform.  For the final episode, the question we were invited to reflect on was: “How does Mary’s life show us how to approach the Eucharist in a biblical way?”

This question is especially timely given the fact that the Church just celebrated the Solemnity of the Annunciation this past Saturday, March 25.  Although we may not initially connect this mystery of the life of Jesus with the Eucharist, it is indeed very Eucharistic.  As we know, human life begins at conception, and so when Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary at the Annunciation, the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. (Jn 1:14)  This is what happens at every celebration of the Eucharist, the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us in the form of bread and wine, though in reality, truly as the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus.

As I reflect on this scene from the Gospel where Mary welcomes the Savior into her womb, what strikes is what we hear in the next passage: “In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.” (Lk 1:39–40)  With Christ in her womb, the love from the One who is love urges her to go in haste to serve her cousin Elizabeth who had conceived a child in her old age.  Learning of this joyful news, Mary went right away to share the love of God.

One of the options for the dismissal at the end of Mass is: “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.”  The first word is key: Go!  Having received the love of God in our body and soul in the Eucharist, we are sent out, and we should imitate Mary and go in haste to live the graces the Lord has blessed us with in His coming to dwell in us.  Like Mary, we should be eager to glorify the Lord by our lives, in both word and action.  Mary’s going in haste demonstrates this action, and she glorifies the Lord in her song of praise after she arrives at her cousin’s, saying those beautiful words: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior.” (Lk 1:46–47)

These two incidents of the Annunciation and the Visitation show how Mary’s example invites us to live a Eucharistic life.  The Eucharist is far more than just coming to Mass to receive Him, only to forget about Him the rest of the week.  Coming to Mass is how we are fed and renewed with the love of God which cannot help but overflow in how we live the rest of the week, letting ourselves be instruments of His love in the daily details of our lives.  Everything that we do can be an opportunity for us to give glory to God by the way we live our lives.  And Mary teaches us how to do this.  This is why I often, when praying in thanksgiving after Mass, ask Mary’s intercession for me that the graces I have received may not be wasted, but shared generously with those whom the Lord will place in my path that day.

As a reminder, we have a weekly reflection question to keep in mind as you watch the next episode of Presence.  It can be found on the bottom right corner of this page.

Every week I try to tell the story of God’s grace alive in one particular person: how He made another ordinary, sometimes struggling, sometimes hurting, person into a saint.

This week I am going to try and tell the story of God’s grace around one particular event, basically one week here in our diocese where God, again and again, consistently, continuously provided as only He can. How He is at work right now to make you, and I, and so many others into saints.

It was a rainy afternoon in mid-March and had been a day filled just enough that I hadn’t had time to tackle any of the little tasks that tend to fall through the cracks, yet wasn’t so packed that I was worn and weary from the day’s events. We’ve all been there: the kind of day where you’re just barely getting by on your own steam. It’s not quite long or arduous enough that you are absolutely forced to turn to God, but not exactly “easy and light”. About 8 of us were having a final meeting to put the finishing touches on our plans for the March for Life that would happen about 10 days later. (Notice that all-important descriptor: our plan…) Little did I know as they asked me to open the meeting in prayer, how much we were going to be leaning on God going forward. (And how He was going to abundantly show that this was His plan.)

Turns out, our ballpark expectation of a maximum of 1200 people had been obliterated over the prior few days. We had 1700 people registered just for the Mass before the March (and 2500 at least for the Rally and March itself). Instead of one bishop and 8 priests, we had 6 bishops and 40 priests. Rather than using only the main floor of the auditorium, we were going to need every seat in there, and I was going to need to figure out how to distribute Holy Communion through every cranny of loge level. Of course, we rejoiced at the prospect of a biblical multitude, but at the same time I think every person on the team was taken-aback by the magnitude of the project we were now attempting to pull off. I cannot speak for all the other hurdles faced to pull everything off, but I would like to share a few that I got to see for myself, and the astonishing ways that God moved mountains all the way through.

Hurdle #1: We didn’t have an altar or ambo. Well, we had a little wooden one, but I already knew it would be dwarfed in the Sangamon Auditorium, and now I doubted it would even be of sufficient size to hold all the corporals, patens, chalices, and missal that we would need for the Mass (not to mention spreading 6 bishops behind it). I thought another member of the team had been in touch with the Archdiocese of St. Louis about borrowing the altar and ambo that they had which Pope St. John Paul II had used during his visit there, but no one had reached out, and I didn’t even have a contact for the person I would need to talk to. My heart whipped back and forth between frustration and discouragement and confidence and hope. Of course God would provide … but everything was falling apart. What are we going to do??!! … but it’ll all work out. I emailed someone at the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis but knew I needed things to move faster than that, so I texted a priest I know down there and paused and said a prayer that God would open the doors that He wanted us to go down… And the priest called back within one minute, tracked down the business manager at their Cathedral for me, found out that the altar was available, and had him emailing me the details within another minute.

Hurdle #2: To borrow the altar and ambo, you have to have it moved by a honest-to-goodness moving company, and it has to be covered by $100,000 of insurance. Did I mentioned we don’t have a budget for this? The choice to move the March for Life down here to Springfield happened just a handful of months ago. Hence the skeleton crew. Hence the month-out contract with Sangamon auditorium. Hence me not having an Altar. And now I needed a moving company with a heap of insurance, this week, and willing to do it out of the goodness of their heart. God was going to ask for trust again, and I needed Him to move a few more mountains.

– Fr. Dominic Rankin will tell the rest of the tale, don’t worry. For now – spoiler alert, he survived the March for Life – but he needs some sleep before attempting any more storytelling.

Since 2006, I have been blessed to live and work in locations where I have never been more than 100 yards from Jesus present in the tabernacle.  In several places, I have not even needed to leave the building to gain access to the tabernacle.  This thought came to me as I was watching Episode 3 of Presence on FORMED.  A few of the speakers spoke about how, when faced with some challenge or question, they would go to the nearby adoration chapel or church to make a visit to Jesus in the Eucharist, speaking to Him and begging for His guidance.  Hearing that reminds me of how privileged I have been to do likewise on so many occasions over the past nearly 17 years.  But I am also aware of how many missed opportunities there have been, how I have taken for granted how close and available Jesus was to me, and yet I just went about my day without stopping in from time to time to visit Him, if for no other reason than to just tell Him that I love Him and to thank Him for His love for me.

During this time of Eucharistic Revival taking place throughout our country and in our diocese, there are many things that we can do to deepen our love for this gift of the Eucharist which the Church rightly calls the “source and summit” of our lives as Catholics.  I would like to suggest that one such practice is making regular visits to Jesus in the Eucharist.  That can be in an adoration chapel, like we have here in town at Blessed Sacrament Church.  If you ever find yourself at one of our two hospitals in town, both have a chapel that is accessible to visitors and where Jesus is present in the tabernacle.  Of course, most of our churches are open during the day for people to stop in and make a visit to Our Lord.  Here at the Cathedral, our doors are unlocked one hour before the morning Mass through shortly after the conclusion of the final Mass of the day.

While making your visit, you can talk to Him about anything!  Share the joys and struggles of the day with Him.  Ask for guidance to the questions that you have.  Give thanks to Him for His goodness and the blessings He has shared with you that day, blessings both known and unknown.  As I wrote above, you can just tell Him that you love Him and thank Him for His love for you.  And I highly encourage you to conclude your visit by making an  act of spiritual communion.  Here are the words I use, but you are free to use whatever works:

I wish, my Lord, to receive you with the purity, humility, and devotion with which your most holy Mother received you, with the spirit and fervor of the saints.

Since you have seemed to enjoy receiving Lenten challenges from me in the past, perhaps for the second half of Lent, I issue the challenge to make a visit to Jesus at least a couple of times a we, outside of your normal coming to the church for Mass.  If you can do every day, great!  But even if you do just once a couple of times a week, it will be more than you were likely doing, and I have great confidence that this practice will very much help strengthen your love for the Eucharist.  St. Alphonsus Liguori wrote that the time spent in visiting the Blessed Sacrament “will be the most profitable to you in this life, and the source of your greatest consolation in death and in eternity.”

As a reminder, we have a weekly reflection question to keep in mind as you watch the next episode of Presence.  It can be found on the bottom right corner of this page.

Feast Day: March 19th| Spouse of Mary, Foster Father of Christ, Prince and Patron of the Universal Church | Imagery: Holding Christ child, Lily (for purity), Blooming Staff (from miraculous engagement to Mary), Carpenter’s Square, often wearing Brown (carpenter garb) and Green (indicating fecundity)

All of us know St. Joseph. We celebrate him on multiple feasts each year, and spend much of Advent with him and Our Lady as they prepare (with us) to receive the gift of the Christ child. This year we approach him through the lens of the Eucharistic Prayers. Well, that is a rather impersonal way to put it … let us choose today to come to St. Joseph and ask him to teach us about our Eucharistic Lord.

And we find an odd thing: He points to his wife. In each Eucharistic prayer, St. Joseph is invoked only in his relationship with Mary, as “Blessed Joseph, her spouse.”  Mary, similarly, is only mentioned and reverenced in relation to her son – “the glorious ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of our God and Lord, Jesus Christ” (EP1) or “Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God” (EP2, 3, & 4). There is something important to grasp here! Even these greatest saints of the Church, given the highest veneration among the choirs of heaven are only honored within their union with Christ! (Recall, we give Mary hyperdulia [highest-veneration], but only as the mother of God, and Joseph protodulia [first-veneration among the other saints], but only as the spouse of Mary). Here’s the key truth: No one becomes a saint without Christ, without becoming a member of His Body (though, as Lumen Gentium mercifullyreminds us, sometimes that union is in ways known only to God).

But isn’t it a better thing to be Jesus’ virginal father, His foster father, than Mary’s spouse?! St. Bernadine of Siena preached of the sublimity of St. Joseph’s vocation as Mary’s spouse, but then makes the obvious point that his even more exalted vocation was to be Jesus’ earthly father, to stand in the place – as a human being – of God the Father! Of course, one becomes a father after first being a husband (both of those vocations themselves flowing from first being a brother, and before all else, a son), so in some ways Joseph’s being a spouse is the prerequisite for his being a father. (Notice that this was the case for Mary as well!  She was asked to bear God’s son after she had already been betrothed, truly entering a preliminary marriage, to St. Joseph). 

But I think there is something more important that St. Joseph is teaching us here: Vocations don’t vanish; nothing cancels God’s call. If God has made you His son, and called you to be His son, nothing will ever steal that identity from you. Not sin, not suffering, not centuries. If God has made you a brother, and called you to be a brother, that relationship never expires. If God has made you a husband, and called you to be a husband, nothing can break or sunder that reality. Not infidelity, not illness, not even death. If God has made you a father, and called you to be a father, as long as you are united to Him, you remain a father like He is Our Father.

Now, earthly “vocations” (with a lower-case “v”): jobs, occupations, hobbies, activities … these things come and go. They are not grounded in God and so they do not last into eternity. But, those parts of our identity that are grounded in Christ remain and endure even unto heavenly life. Consider St. Joseph. He is called “Guardian of Virgins”, “Protector of the Universal Church”, “Terror of Demons” … titles that only apply to him if he is still, in heaven, the spouse of Mary, made mother of the Church on calvary. Yes, “in the resurrection, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage” [Matthew 22:30], but marriage can no more be dissolved in heaven than it can here on earth. Sacraments and vocations will no longer be fundamental in heaven, not because they are abolished but because they are fulfilled. (So is my priesthood!) In-betweens aren’t necessary once we live in God, yet all those ways that we were here called into likeness with the Heavenly Father – all those specific ways we were incorporated into Christ – will remain as glorious and perfected characteristics that somehow mark our glorified bodies and souls in heaven!

In other words, Christ must be the nourishment for our vocations now, for nothing else will sustain them in Heaven. 

– Fr. Dominic Rankin was in seminary when Pope Benedict decided to add St. Joseph’s name to the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th Eucharistic Prayers on May 1^st 2013 (feast of St. Joseph the Worker). Wait, Pope Francis was Pope by then, how did Pope Benedict make the addition?! This was a document, and decision, made by both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.  Similar to Pope Francis’ first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, the decree which added St. Joseph’s name officially to those Eucharistic Prayers, “Paternas Vices”, was also written first by Pope Benedict, but left up to his successor to edit and officially promulgate! (Fr. Dominic was not in seminary in 1973 when Pope St. John XXIII added St. Joseph to the 1^st Eucharistic Prayer, but our Bishop Thomas John Paprocki was in seminary in that auspicious year!)