Perpetual, Durational Eucharistic Presence

Christ is with us...small, pure, thin, light, white, quiet, simple, humble, silent...in the tabernacle...perpetually, loyally, durationally, unequivocally, patiently, hopefully, enduringly, generously, ecstatically.

This is the most dense, profound, intense, mysterious, penetrating, gratuitous, absolute fact of Catholic life.

This is the most underrated reality in the history of the created universe...even by otherwise admirable Catholic priests and laity.

This quiet, anonymous presence does not exceed the Eucharistic Liturgy, it is the continuation of it. The two...the act, encounter, event...and the enduring Presence...live within each other. Together, they are the one Eucharistic Mystery, the very presence of Christ among us. Neither are real without the other.

This is the core, the summit, the center, the interior form of Catholic life.

We live as finite, temporal, spatial, historic creatures in time and space: for Catholics, the event of the Eucharist structures time; the presence of the Eucharist, in the local Church, structures space.

The two prime, practical questions for a Catholic, wherever and whenever, are: When do we celebrate the Liturgy? Where is the Eucharistic presence?

Christ is not with us occasionally, randomly, intermittently, periodically, unpredictably! He is with us eventfully, dramatically, historically, at a specific time and place in the Liturgy. He remains with us steadily, reliably, predictably in the Tabernacle.

Not so for mainstream Protestantism for whom Christ comes occasionally, sporadically, intermittently in a discrete, isolated occurrence. For them there is no actual, concrete durability, dependability, perpetuity.

Eucharistic Indifference: the most grave, undiagnosed Catholic malady. Let's do the math: a year has 8760 hours. The average practicing Catholic is in Church for obligatory mass about 60 hours annually. How much time is spent just being with our Lord by this Catholic? Perhaps an hour or two. In fact, almost everything else is more important than relaxing in the presence of Christ.

Christ hungers for us! From the cross he said "I thirst!" This was thirst for water, for sure. But it was also thirst for our love. He came here to suffer and die...to share his love...and to elicit our love. 

Our churches are mostly locked. The unlocked are empty. Christ is alone, isolated, ignored. His love unrequited.

Concluding 2023 on December 31 Pope Francis prayed vespers but, for the second year, dispensed with the customary adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. I am unaware of the reason. This is unfortunate.

On other occasions, Francis has lauded the value of adoration and grieved its diminishment. He has been particularly clear on the connection of such adoration with attention to the poor. With St. Mother Teresa, St. John Paul and myriads of Catholic saints and mystics, Francis knows that love of the humble, poor Christ in the tabernacle is intrinsic to authentic Catholic love of the poor. 

An underlying weakness in the pontificate of Francis has been: a preference for process, change, progress, fluidity and a disparagement of permanence, durability, tradition. It is hard to imagine John Paul or Benedict dispensing with adoration and all it entails of permanence.

The perpetuity of the Eucharist infuses the permanence of marriage, the foundation of the Church and indeed of human society. In the flux, fluidity, and impermanence of modernity, it is before the stable Eucharist that a married couple inbreath a steady, serene patience with each other.

Likewise, the permanence of the vowed and the ordained life flow directly from the Eucharist which they serve and embody.

In our own fragility, finitude, weakness, temporality, historicity, sinfulness, and mutability we are incapable of an appropriate response to the love we encounter in the Eucharistic liturgy. Christ is giving Himself, body and soul, humanity and divinity, in Word and Spirit and in his body and blood...and we are distracted, ruminating, bored, preoccupied, half-hearted. Even the best of us. And so, in kindness to us, Christ remains...never to abandon us. Whatever our wanderings, he remains, present for us, waiting for us, thirsting for us.

Our interior freedom is so fragile, fractured, and diminished that it is rare we are recollected enough to make a full, free, deliberate gift of self to reciprocate what we receive from Christ. Our most solemn vows...marriage and the religious/ordained life...are made in awareness of our weakness, less firm resolutions than pleas for divine help and acts of hope. Rare is the gallant gesture of the martyr or hero. Rather, in God's grace, we work for a happy marriage and family, for virtue and holiness in a succession of a million min-acts, perhaps none of them absolutely pure, but cumulatively, perseveringly, over time through history, always repenting, forgiving and asking for pardon, persevering in what is almost always far from perfection. Echoing the persistent Eucharistic presence, we thank, petition, praise, atone, assist, bear patiently, surrender, donate, accept...over and over and over again. It is the long game: like the farmer who seeds and waits for the harvest, we persist and wait in hope for the harvest of the true, the good and the beautiful. Even as we know that Absolute Truth, Good and Beauty abide quietly for us in the tabernacle.  

St. Elizabeth Seton, leading up to her conversion, sat in her Anglican Church and prayed to the Eucharist she knew to be alive in the Catholic Church across the street.

Bishop Fulton Sheen made an hour of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament every day.

Arguably, the gravest casualty of the "Spirit of Vatican II" was the loss of reverence for the Eucharistic Presence. The sisters who taught us did us a great service: taught us to reverence Christ physically present. Our generation has largely forgotten this.

The Eucharistic Revival, now celebrated with our bishops, will bear fruit if aligned with a recovery of two other basics: confession of sin and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

And so it is for us to emulate the durational, persevering, patient love Christ pours on us. Not for one hour a week. Not for half an hour a day. But enduringly, patiently, perpetually...visits, adoration, sign of the cross when passing a Church, holy hours, the rosary, daily office, frequent aspirations, periodic retreats and pilgrimages, and habitually directing our attention periodically to a nearby Church. Longing to sit...unproductively, "wastefully," affectionately...with our Great Lover.

Draw us to yourself, Lord Jesus, in the Eucharist, your gracious act,  your abiding presence, the communion in holiness of the saints, the body of Christ, the Church!