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Washington D.C., Jun 11, 2021 / 16:03 pm
Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, Supreme Chaplain of the Knights of Columbus, called on the Knights not only to “support” but also to “be in the forefront” of a national Eucharistic Revival project to be presented to the U.S. bishops next week.
At his address during the Knights of Columbus state deputies meeting in New Haven, Connecticut on Friday, Archbishop Lori previewed a proposed three-year Eucharistic Revival project of the U.S. bishops which would launch in 2022.
Lori said the project would take place at “the parish, diocesan, and national level to help all those whom we serve to recover, to reclaim, and to recoup their faith in the Eucharistic Lord and their resolve to participate in Holy Mass without fail every Sunday.”
The bishops’ proposal also includes a national Eucharistic Congress in 2024, to be attended by 100,000 Catholics who would then act as Eucharistic missionaries.
“Bishops in other countries have undertaken similar efforts,” added the Supreme Chaplain. He called on the Knights present to lead the effort in their communities.
“It is incumbent upon us as Knights of Columbus, upon you as lay leaders in the Church, not only to support this effort but also to be in the forefront of advancing it, especially by bearing witness to the centrality of the Eucharist in your own life and in the life of your family, and in the life of the Church,” Lori said.
“Surely,” said Archbishop Lori, “we could do nothing that would please Blessed Michael McGivney more than this!” Blessed Michael McGivney, the organization’s founder, was beatified last fall at the cathedral in Hartford, Connecticut.
The Knights of Columbus is the world’s largest fraternal organization. Leaders from every U.S. state and around the world attended Friday’s meeting in New Haven, the site of the organization’s founding. It was the Knights’ first national in-person meeting since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
In addition to the joint installation of Supreme Knight Kelly and all attending state deputies – a first for the Knights – the meeting also included the installation of new Deputy Supreme Knight Paul G. O’Sullivan. In another historic first for the Knights, Patrick T. Mason, a member of the Osage Nation, was installed as the first Native American supreme secretary of the Knights.
“In the meantime, let us as leaders of the Knights of Columbus unite heart and soul around the Eucharistic Lord, around the sacrament of our charity, unity, and fraternity, just as we have taught to do by our Blessed Founder for whose canonization we pray more earnestly than ever!” Archbishop Lori said in closing.
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We read: “The bishops’ proposal also includes a national Eucharistic Congress in 2024, to be attended by 100,000 Catholics who would then act as Eucharistic missionaries.”
All well and good, but what about the 40,000 priests already front and center? And already with years of seminary training and, by definition (!), serving as extensions of the bishops (not as congregational “presiders”).
Many solid priests have already (!) said from the ambo what needs to be heard from the USCCB regarding Eucharistic coherence, and it takes less than five minutes of straight talk.
But, yes, the Knights and others have a valued support role. One does hope, however, that parishes are not to be reduced further to sheltered workshops for 100,000 (half-formed?) liturgists and DREs who are now looking to be rehired as paid (?) missionaries, post-COVID.
What is the fit, really, between ordained priests and missionaries?
After reading your comment I need not add, since you’ve said it all. Especially on the issue of Eucharistic coherence and wanting episcopal leadership.
Evidence of a broad strategy of culture change is heartening (Archbishop Lori’s remarks). Eucharistic reverence based on an interior life of “coherence” as manifested in the public lives of all of us. (Certainly including those of an Aztec mentality, for whom partial birth dismemberment is “sacred ground,” i.e., puppeteer Pelosi, 2013, vs. Moses, Exodus 3:11.)
From a very broad historical and “cultural” perspective, even Muhammad—who DENIED the divinity of Christ—still went countercultural in his Arabian setting when he forbade the sand dune burial of unwanted female babies (Quran 6:141, 152; 16:60-1; 17:31-33; and 81:3). So, today’s modernity?—the “choice” of either the dumpster or “medical research.”
For us, then, in post-Christian and now cancel-culture America, we are to REMEMBER that the sacramental life of the EUCHARISTIC PRESENCE (and Eucharistic Adoration) is inseparable from the alarming historical fact of the INCARNATION, that Christ then said “This IS my body…Do THIS in remembrance of Me,” and that the convert St. Augustine explained himself in a very, very few words about the WORD: “I believe, that I might understand.”
To repeat an earlier “comment,” Cardinal Joseph Siri explained OUR PRESENT MOMENT this way:
“This fundamental truth of the reality of the Incarnation constitutes a general criterion through which all subjects, questions, themes regarding the whole economy of Redemption must be seen and understood. Thus, the mystery of the Church, its origin and its constitutional reality are founded on the Incarnation. The question of the relations of the Church with the world [!], the question of the natural and the supernatural [!], the question of the essence and meaning of the sacramental reality [!], the question of the vocation of man and his mission in history [!], the question of the rapport of the individual and humanity with history and eternity[!], all questions [!], as much in what concerns the knowledge of God, as in the means and ways of salvation [!], have a common denominator: the Incarnation of the Word of God by Mary and the Holy Spirit” (Cardinal Joseph Siri, “Gethsemane,” 1981).