The Season of Lent and the Importance of Eucharistic Revival

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The season of Lent is underway, and it's a time to take spiritual stock of our lives. You know, Lent asks us to focus on those things which are truly important. Very often in life, we can get entangled in things that, well, in the end, they don't really matter a whole lot.

The season of Lent asks us to look at those things that matter unto eternity, our relationship with Jesus, our spiritual life. It's like a mirror that's held up to us during the 40 day retreat of Lent, as we prepare to celebrate the most important event in human history, the Paschal Mystery, the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus, his Ascension into heaven, and the coming of God the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. These are the things that matter, and how well we have integrated them into our lives matters very, very much. Matters unto eternity.

So Lent is a serious time for introspection, for each of us to ask important questions. Where am I in my relationship with Jesus? Have I grown since last year during Lent? Have I grown in my spiritual life? You know, for most of us, it's very easy to become self indulgent. Indulge yourself in food. In materialistic things like buying yourself all kind of things. Whatever it might be, our world encourages us to indulge ourselves. But Lent calls us away from that very common invitation that the culture gives us. Lent calls us to self denial, to deflate our egos, as it were, so that we might open greater space in our lives for God.

This call to a greater time of prayer, you and I can find challenging. We are stingy with our time. We want to watch television. We want to scroll our phones, our iPads, watch Netflix, play video games, go to dinner with our friends. There's only so much time in the day, and it seems like a lot of us put the spiritual aspects at the very end. If I have time, I'll say some prayers tonight. If I have time, I'll maybe I'll read the Bible. Lent calls us to be more generous with our time with God, to open our lives more fully to times of prayer. Just sitting quietly, silently, allowing God to speak to our hearts, and responding to what he has to tell us. You know, we can become so indulgent with food.

Lent asked us again to open ourselves to be willing to deprive ourselves of some of that intake at meals, and fast. Fast from those things so there's more room for God in our hearts, in our lives. In addition to being stingy with our time, we can really be iron fisted with our possessions, not wanting to let them go, and wanting to accumulate more and more.

Lent asked us to open our hands and our hearts, to be more generous in almsgiving and charity. Those are the invitations, the important invitations that Lent places before us as we prepare to celebrate the Easter mysteries. But one of the most distinctive qualities you notice when you come to church during the season of Lent is the color purple, the vestment that the priests and the deacons may be wearing and sometimes you'll see it around the church, different coverings, the altar may be covered in purple, And it's the color that really stands out. But a lot of people don't know why purple was chosen by the church to be the color of Lent. Well, there there are really two reasons why it became the color. You see, in ancient times, purple was reserved to royalty and very, very wealthy people. It was a very difficult color to dye cloth, a very expensive process. In fact, if you look at the 16th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, verse 14, Saint Luke, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles, introduces us to a woman called Lydia. She was a Christian, and the church met in her home. He describes her as a dealer of purple cloth. And that was a way of telling us that Lydia was a woman of significant means. She was a very wealthy businesswoman, a dealer of purple cloth.

So purple was reserved very much for royalty, the very, very well-to-do in society. When you see the color purple during Lent, it's a reminder of how the lord and his passion was mocked by the Roman soldiers as king of the Jews. They disparaged his true royalty, so that the purple reminds us of the true royalty of Christ, and how he suffered for us selflessly during his passion and death. Secondly, the color purple is our response to the selfless love of the savior. It's a color of penitence and repentance. And so when we see that color, in addition to reminding us of the royalty of Christ, it's a reminder of how we respond to his love by repenting and taking on penance during this holy season.

So as you see those visible reminders, you know, when we put on clothes, many times our outward clothing expresses what we're feeling internally. Like if you go to a funeral, you're probably gonna wear black, right, or some muted color. If you go to a wedding or some festive occasion, the clothing is more colorful. Right? So our our outward clothing expresses our inner feelings very often. And so it is with the vestments during the Lenten season, and the colors throughout the church. The outward color of purple reminds us that inwardly, we need to be acknowledging the kingship of Christ over us, and we need to respond to his love in repentance.

The catechism of the Catholic church teaches that the Eucharist is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. It is not a symbol, but the real presence. The Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith. And to underscore this basic truth, the Bishops of the United States launched the National Eucharistic Revival. You can learn about the Eucharistic Revival on the homepage of our website at saintcoleman.org.

The Catholic Bishops of the United States launched a Eucharistic revival in the summer of 2022 that continues through next year. It's really a milestone event because it's the first time that the collective group of bishops here in the United States, first time in 83 years, they've launched a National Eucharistic Congress. It's all about Eucharistic revival. And some people have had the question, why now? Well, over the last few years, we've seen an enormous amount of social unrest, increased polarization, various geopolitical crises, the world is in desperate need of the love of Christ and the bishops want to open wide the doors to Jesus through Eucharistic revival.

When the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, as you recall, all Catholic churches in the United States were shut down for many months. Catholics could not go to receive the Eucharist at mass. Now after that was lifted and things went back to normal, there was a big problem. More than 30% of Catholics didn't return to the pews after the pandemic and in survey after survey in recent years, there's been a startling revelation that a majority of Catholics who go to mass actually do not believe in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.

We've also seen over the past decade or so the rise of what they call the nones among the millennial generation. Not none like a sister in the church, Nones as in n o n e. Not affiliating with any church. Oftentimes people will say, well I'm spiritual, but I don't go to church or or believe in a specific creed, per se. So we live in very challenging times for the Catholic church, and the bishops recognize we have to find a way to increase our ability to provide to those who are in the church and to the world be a credible witness of the difference that Jesus Christ makes in the life of every individual. As the people of God, we must be reminded that the Eucharist truly is the living god, Jesus with us always until the end of the age, as he promised in the Gospel of Matthew.

But as we try to meet the needs of our country, the world, the culture around us with the love of Christ, first, we must take time to experience our own Eucharistic revival with a renewed encounter and love for Jesus and the Eucharist for the life of the world and when the bishops announced this initiative, a lot of people said, well, what is what is gonna happen? What is the intended fruit you would like to see? And when this revival was launched, the bishops defined 4 primary goals. To provide a more profound encounter with Jesus Christ in the Sunday liturgy, as a point of unity among all Catholics, and through this powerful encounter, find personal healing and courage to take the gospel to a world in need of authentic love the love of Christ which is found in the Eucharist.

The second goal is to spark personal conversions, through the joyful discovery of a relationship with Christ, by encountering the love of God present in Jesus in the Eucharist.

The third goal set out by the bishops was to elevate the truth and practices of our Catholic faith through the rediscovery of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the source and summit of the church, and of who we are as the people of God.

And finally, to form, inspire, and launch missionary disciples, filled with love of God and neighbor that comes from an encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist to the margins of the church and the culture around us.

Now this movement that began 2 years ago is called the National Eucharistic Revival and the National Eucharistic Congress is gonna be a specific event held in July, this summer in July of 2024 in Indianapolis, involving lay people, clergy, and religious. To learn more about the revival, about how you can get involved, about how you can grow deeper in your love of the Eucharist, and reach out to others and all of this is on a website called eucharisticcongress.org. That's eucharistic congress.org. So take some time and visit the website. There's a lot of videos, there's podcasts, there's links to all kind of resources.

The belief that Jesus is truly present, body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist, is one of the pillars of the teaching of the Catholic church. And all of us are called to believe in that and to be able to be credible witnesses. There was that phrase I mentioned a few few minutes ago, missionary disciples. The church uses that term often because we're all missionary disciples. It's not just priests, bishops, deacons. It's every single person through your baptism that you're called to go out. Now you're not necessarily called to go to India or Sub Saharan Africa. You're called to go out in your community, in your workplace to be a credible witness. We live in a broken world, and the Eucharist is one of the ways we can heal ourselves, all of our shortcomings, and heal the culture and the world around us.

So, again, all of us at the parish encourage you to visit the website, eucharisticcongress.org, to learn more about the revival and this summer's National Eucharistic Congress.

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