That, we could say, is a failure of catechesis, but not in the way that most people mean it. Yet are we assuming too much? What if the chief problem that we face isn’t that people who once experienced Christ’s presence in the Eucharist have lost that experience or forgotten what it means? What if the real problem is that they never truly experienced Christ’s presence in the Eucharist? A better understanding of what it is that we’re experiencing, and opportunities to experience that reality more fully and more often, can deepen that experience and help us keep from losing it amid the distractions of modern life. The desire for all of those things naturally follows from an experience of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. There’s nothing wrong with the standard answers - better catechesis more beautiful liturgies and doctrinally strong hymns an emphasis on preparation for receiving Communion, including more frequent confession more opportunities for Eucharistic adoration - but I’m not convinced that they address the problem, because I’m not sure that we truly understand what the real problem is. Serving on the executive team for the USCCB’s National Eucharistic Revival, I’ve had the opportunity to ask many people what they think we should do to help Catholics (and, ultimately, everyone) come to believe once again (or for the first time) in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
I enjoy writing in each of those places, but the qualitative difference between writing in front of the Blessed Sacrament and writing anywhere else is not a matter of this or that sense.Īnd whatever else I may be able to say about writing at the kitchen table or on the porch swing or in the reading chair in my library, that particular presence of Christ is not there. And yet, when I am writing in the chapel, I experience something different from when I’m writing at the kitchen table at 5 a.m., or on the porch swing in the evening, or in my library later at night. To one extent or another, all of us have bought into the modern scientific worldview that limits “experience” to those things that we can see, smell, touch, feel and taste. Peter and Paul, with all the same benefits. Owen Campion removed the Blessed Sacrament from the chapel and I extinguished the sanctuary lamp, we, too, went home, and over the next few months, I started writing on occasion down the street at Sts.
I started writing in the chapel in the early days of COVID-19, when, on March 13, we sent everyone to work from home, and I kept coming into the office. (You, dear reader, may of course disagree.) I don’t always write this way, but when I do, I find that my thoughts are more focused, the words flow more freely, and my columns turn out better. I am writing this column in the chapel at OSV, sitting in the dark before the Blessed Sacrament.
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