Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Francis de Sales Chapel
Archdiocese of Oklahoma City Pastoral Center
Retreat for the Sovereign Order of Malta
Opening Dinner Keynote
June 24, 2022
To listen to an audio recording of tonight’s talk, please click below:
The following text guided the talk:
- It is a real joy to be with you tonight here in Oklahoma City for this St. John the Baptist Feast Day Reception, made even more solemn by the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart.
- We turn to the Lord tonight in the midst of this wonderful meal and thank him for the gift of hunger, which opens us up every day in humility and gratitude to taste and see his goodness. With providential love he never ceases to respond to our filial prayer to give us each day our daily bread. He fills the hungry with good things and this bodily hunger continually reminds us how to yearn for every word that comes from his mouth, how to hunger and thirst for righteousness, how to make doing his will our food and drink, how to look with compassion on our brothers and sisters who are under- or malnourished in body or soul, and most of all how to crave the eternal wedding feast. In speaking about his self-gift in the Holy Eucharist in the Synagogue of Capernaum the day after the miracle of the multiplication of five loaves and two fish and exactly a year before he fulfilled his words during the Last Supper, Jesus told us, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” He wanted to transform our natural hunger into a supernatural one, for what he called the True Manna that the Father would give, what he taught us to ask the Father to bestow when he taught us how to pray in the Our Father, “Give us this day our epi-ousios or supersubstantial Bread.”
- Helping us traverse the bridge between natural and supernatural nourishment is one of the reasons why, I think, Jesus did so much of his saving work at meals. He unveiled his glory for the first time during a wedding banquet in Cana. He embraced sinners at table in the houses of Matthew the Publican and Simon the Pharisee. He deepened friendships over food in Bethany with Martha, Mary and Lazarus. He showed his lavish generosity on hillsides by multiplying loaves and fish. He anticipated and began the new and eternal Passover at table in the Upper Room, going from natural to supernatural through the words of consecration, a wondrous passage he repeated when he revealed Himself to the disciples in Emmaus through the Breaking of Bread. And over breakfast at a seashore he taught the apostles as shepherds how to tend and feed his sheep materially and spiritually and as fishers of men how to fill the nets to the breaking point.
- Jesus wants to make meals like the one we’re having tonight a sacred banquet, where, when two or more of us gather in his name, he joins us to continue his saving work. It’s here where, as we break bread, fruit of the earth and work of human hands, he seeks to make us companions, cum-panis. It’s at table, as we share our lives with each other, that he seeks to bring about a true convivium modeled and pointing to the sharing of life that is meant to take place at the altar, where he seeks to make us “one body, one Spirit” and be brought to fulfillment in the table of God the Father’s eternal home. So how good it is that we are here together, with each other, with the Lord, and we pray, with St. John the Baptist and all those interceding for us at the unending banquet of heaven!
- Peter DeKeratry has asked me to speak to you tonight about the banquet given by Christ with imperishable food, the True Manna, his flesh and blood given for the life of the world. We celebrated on Sunday, as you know, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus, Corpus Christi, and we began the U.S. Church’s three-year Eucharistic Revival, meant to help us grow in Eucharistic faith, amazement, love, life and witness. I am very humbled and honored to have been appointed by the U.S. Bishops one of 56 National Eucharistic Preachers, sent out to try to try to spark this revitalization in Dioceses, parishes, chaplaincies, schools and universities, indeed the whole Church.
- This is the biggest Eucharistic initiative in the history of the Church in the United States. In the first year, there will be a focus on diocesan events for clergy, religious, faithful, young people and more. The second year will concentrate on helping every parish to become more thoroughly and truly Eucharistic. The third year will be national, featuring the first Eucharistic Congress in the United States in almost 50 years, when the Bishops hope 80,000 or more will come to Indianapolis July 17-21, 2024 to celebrate Jesus in the greatest of his gifts. There they hope those in attendance and all those participating virtually will commit themselves to being Eucharistic missionaries, taking their faith in and love for the Eucharistic Lord out to fallen away Catholics in their parishes and families, to our Protestant brothers and sisters and to the ends of streets, parishes, dioceses and even the whole world. The most important dimension of the Revival, however, is not diocesan, parochial or national; it’s personal. The bishops hope that each of us will commit to grow our Eucharistic faith, amazement, love and life and to share that faith, amazement, love and life.
- The reason why the US Bishops have established this initiative is in response to an evident crisis in Eucharistic faith and life in our country, one that is seen, often far more severely, in various other countries in the world.
- In the United States, only one out of five Catholics in the United States comes to Mass each Sunday and far fewer attend Holy Days of Obligation. Several recent surveys have shown that only three of ten Catholics, and only half of those who attend Mass each Sunday, believe what the Church boldly professes about the Eucharist: that the Eucharist actually and astonishingly is Jesus — his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity — under the appearances of bread and wine; that after the words of consecration, God himself is really, truly and substantially present on our altars, in our tabernacles and within us who receive him. And since, as the Second Vatican Council memorably described, the celebration of the Eucharist is the source, summit, root and center of Catholic faith and life, if Catholics’ Eucharistic faith and practice are weak, then all of Catholic life is enfeebled. Hence the urgency and importance of the Eucharistic Revival.
- What should be our response to Jesus’ self-gift in the Eucharist? It’s got to me more than having faith in this mysterium fidei, that we can pass the test so many sadly flunk today and affirm with conviction the Church’s teaching about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the Real Presence of Christ, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. It’s got to be more than doing the minimum expected of us, coming to Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation and receiving Jesus in the state of grace at least once a year. It’s got to be more than making Jesus in the Holy Eucharist a part of our life, or even an important part of our life, or even the most important part of our life. It’s to make him the source and summit, root and center of our life, the starting point from which everything flows, the goal toward which everything goes, the strong root that strengthens and nourishes all the branches of our life, the center around which everything else in our life is integrated.
- There’s an extraordinarily beautiful Church in New York City named — appropriately for June 24 and for the Knights and Dames of the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and Malta! — Saint Jean Baptiste and run since 1900 by the Blessed Sacrament Fathers founded by St. Peter Julian Eymard, who founded several religious institutes, for priests, religious and lay people, focused on Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. For those of you staying for the retreat, I’ll have occasion to speak to you about the stained glass windows in this Church, which feature many of the foreshadowings of the Eucharist in the Old and New Testaments prior to the Last Supper. The high altar of the Church is built like a massive Tabor, the pedestal on which a monstrance containing the Holy Eucharist is normally placed for solemn Eucharistic Adoration. But what I want to mention here is that around the entire Church are words, much like you see in huge black and gold mosaics in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Whereas St. Peter’s Basilica features Jesus’ words in Latin to Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: … whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” and “I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail, and after you have converted, strengthen your brothers,” in Saint Jean Baptiste the Latin words are taken from the Lauda Sion Salvatorem, the Corpus Christi Sequence, written by Saint Thomas Aquinas, that the Church has sung before the Gospel for 759 years. Wrapping around the apse surrounding the altar are the words from the second of 24 verses, “Quantum potes, tantum aude,” he wrote in the second of 24 Latin verses, “However much you can do, so much dare to do,” before St. Thomas notes that reality of the gift of the Eucharistic Jesus far exceeds the capacity of all human praise and action. I think this spirituality of “daring to do all we can,” is meant to characterize our approach to the Eucharistic revival and to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist in particular. It’s not a question of doing something or enough. No one in love ever strives to do the minimum. He or she boldly and joyfully seeks to do more.
- We see this spirituality, for example, in Mary of Bethany, who right before Palm Sunday and a few days before the Last Supper, when together with her siblings Martha and Lazarus, she was hosting Jesus in their house, took a liter of costly aromatic nard, what Judas Iscariot estimated was 300 days wages worth, about a full year’s salary since the person would take the Sabbath off — and with lavish love “wasted” it on Jesus’ feet, wiping the oil off with her hair, a real gesture of total commitment to Jesus. The fragrant nard came from the oil of the roots of a flower that grows only in China, India and Nepal that would need to be crushed to get a minuscule amount of oil out of it. Just imagine one would need to crush to get a liter of oil — no wonder why it was so costly. Last night I looked on Amazon and 5 milliliters of this aromatic spikenard cost $69.33. Multiply that by 200 and you get a liter, for $13,866. It was much more expensive in Mary’s time. And she poured it out on Jesus’ feet as a sign of unsparing love. Judas, as we remember, who as Archbishop Sheen said knew the cost of everything but the value of nothing, objected to Mary’s supposedly wasting it on Jesus’ feet. Her overflowing appreciation for Jesus was a scandal to him, but it’s been an inspiration for those who love the Lord ever since. Jesus is indeed worth a year’s salary. He’s worth far more than $14,000 in oil. As the great Lenten hymn, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, reminds us, “Were the whole realm of nature mine, ‘Twere an offering far too small, Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all!” Mary sought to give her all. She dared to do all she could. How inspiring and exemplary her love is!
- If we love him like that, some may, like Judas, object. We remember that Judas was outed as a traitor Jesus during Jesus’ Eucharistic Discourse in Capernaum when the Lord knew those who didn’t believe and the one who would betray him. He would actually fulfill that treachery a year later by leaving the Last Supper when Jesus gave us the Eucharist for the first time. Lavish love for Jesus is a scandal to them. The virtue of munificence, trying to do something great and beautiful for God who has done so much for us, can repel people who are pusillanimous with regard to the things of God. If a parish builds a Church or a Eucharistic adoration chapel too beautiful, or has a tabernacle or monstrance too ornate, some may complain why wasn’t the money better used to care for the poor, failing to grasp that such things, shared in common with the poor, help to lift up their hearts even more. If we make the decision to go to daily Mass, to come to adoration in the middle of the night, or try to make a regular Eucharistic holy hour, some of our family members, friends and even fellow parishioners may accuse us of being unbalanced fanatics with messed up priorities. But the proper response to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is lavish love. As an old spiritual director of mine who worked with Archbishop Coakley at Mount Saint Mary’s used to say, the Christian life is like a game of high stakes poker. Jesus, on Calvary and in the Eucharist, has gone “all in,” putting in all his chips. The only way to stay in the game, even though we have far fewer chips, is to go all in too. The fitting existential reply to a God who gives all down to the dregs of his blood is to give all. Quantum potes, tantum aude.
- And if the Church in the US does so, we will not just address the problem of deficient Eucharistic knowledge, faith, amazement, love, life and sharing. We will respond to what Pope Benedict used to call the greatest crisis facing the Church, the crisis of secularism, which is a practical atheism in which people live day-to-day etsi Deus non daretur, as if God were not a given, as if the Lord didn’t exist. In the Eucharist, Jesus gives the response to secularism. To a world in which many Catholics Monday through Saturday and even on Sunday live like everyone else does, live as if every nanosecond weren’t a gift from the Lord holding them in existence, Jesus in the Eucharist fulfills his valedictory promise at the Ascension, “Know that I will be with you always until the end of time.” Jesus who took on our humanity to redeem it all, remains with us in the Holy Eucharist, to accompany us in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, in poverty and prosperity all the days of our life. He strengthens us when we’re weak, comforts us in sorrow, illumines us in doubt, lifts us when we’re over our head, celebrates with us in victory, draws good for us in our losses, in short, he gives himself to us in every circumstance. As Pope Francis loves to say, the kerygma, the essential core of the Christian proclamation, is “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.” (EG 164). That truth changes everything. As he wrote in his beautiful exhortation The Joy of the Gospel, “We are convinced from personal experience that it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to. …We know well that with Jesus life becomes richer and that with him it is easier to find meaning in everything” (266). And Jesus does all of this in the Holy Eucharist.
- But we have to respond to this gift. St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests, once said to his parishioners in Ars, France, in the early 19th century, “Next to this sacrament, we are like someone who dies of thirst next to a river, just needing to bend the head down to drink; or like a poor man next to a treasure chest, when all that is needed is to stretch out his hand.” He added, “The great misfortune is that we neglect to have recourse to this divine nourishment given to help us traverse the desert of life. We’re like a person who dies of hunger next to a well-stocked table.”
- And so this Eucharistic revitalization is meant to help us to recognize the gift we’ve been given, to drink of the living water flowing in that river, to fill ourselves with the nourishment to strengthen us on the journey of life, to become one with the pearl of great price who stretches out his hand to us hoping we’ll grasp that Eucharistic hand and never let go. It’s to help us learn to live truly Eucharistic lives, drawing our very life from the one who gave his life so that we might have life to the full. It’s an opportunity for us to learn how to pray the Mass with all the faith and love we can. It’s a privileged time to resolve to spend more time with Jesus who waits for us in tabernacles and monstrances seeking to illumine our mind, inflame our hearts, and help us with in the eschatological game of poker. It’s a chance for us to learn how to make our lives sacraments of charity and commentaries on the words of consecration as we give our body and blood, our sweat, tears, time, resources, for others. It’s a suitable and acceptable occasion for us to become Eucharistic missionaries, infectiously drawing people by our words and by our witness to come to Jesus, who humbly waits for us, blesses us, and feeds us from the altar and the tabernacle.
- The hope for the revival is that each of us will recognize that the Lord Jesus, with his heart burning out of love for us, is calling us to himself, and to respond with love to his love. If we live this revival personally, it will overflow into the renewal and revitalization of our family bonds, our friendships, our parishes, our Dioceses, this Sovereign Order of Malta in Oklahoma, the Church throughout our country and beyond. Not only does the Church need this revival, but each of us does. As we thank the Lord Jesus for this gift and the opportunity he is giving us now to respond to him, we ask him for the grace that we may dare to do all we can in response to his lavish love, extraordinary gift, and life-changing invitation. O Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, All Praise and All Thanksgiving, Be Every Moment Thine! Amen!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download