The Church’s 2,000-year history includes countless saints who received unique charisms from the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:4) suited to the needs of their respective times and places. Yet we sometimes forget that this tradition is not a completed history book, but a living tradition in which new heroes continue to show the light of sanctity in our modern age.

100 years ago today, one of these contemporary heroes—who is now on the path to canonization—was born unto eternal life: Venerable Antoni Gaudi, the “Architect of God,” responsible for the tallest church in the world: la Basilica de la Sagrada Família (the Basilica of the Holy Family) in Barcelona.

Gaudi was born in 1852 in the Catalan region, not far from Barcelona. As a child, young Antoni suffered ill health, which led to him spending less time in a classroom, and more time observing nature, taking in our Creator’s natural beauty in profound ways that he would later express in his artistic career.

In 1870, young Gaudi relocated to pursue architecture studies in Barcelona. While taking intermittent courses at the University of Barcelona, Gaudi worked as a surveyor for more advanced architects to earn money and pay for school. After taking due time to master his craft, Gaudi finished his first major projects in his early thirties, starting with the Casa Vincens, completed in 1885.

Following that, Gaudi’s career truly took off, and he became one of the most sought-after and well-paid architects in Spain. During this time, most of Gaudi’s projects were secular ones, and he was known to have an active social schedule, frequenting fancy Barcelona restaurants with his fine clothes and cigars. But as the Catalan architect completed his expensive custom commissions, the Divine Architect moved toward completing His own creative plan for Gaudi’s life and career.

After (and perhaps because of) a failed marriage proposal in his forties, Gaudi grew more devoted to the Catholic faith of his youth. He embodied a more religious lifestyle, spending more time in prayer, and modeling a simple Christian piety that eventually led to him living in a very modest studio. Gaudi also pivoted to spend more time on church commissions, such as the Colonia Güell (consecrated in 1915), as well as the landmark project that would define his career: la Basilica de la Sagrada Família.

Gaudi spent decades on this project, starting it before his mature period of piety. Yet as he became increasingly devout in his faith, Gaudi decided in 1914 to make the basilica his sole artistic endeavor. When pressed about how long the project would take, the spiritually mature Gaudi, working for the Lord above all else, would joke, “My client is not in a hurry.”

After devoting 12 years exclusively to Sagrada Família, Gaudi tragically died on June 10, 1926, after being hit by a tram on his way to church. Only the first of Sagrada Família’s 18 towers was completed at the time. While Gaudi’s work on Sagrada Família came to an unexpected end, we know that the Holy Spirit’s work through His saints often continues well after their time on earth. That is certainly true of Gaudi’s legacy, and for his wondrous basilica of Barcelona, whose final tower is being blessed by Pope Leo within a special ceremony today.

Under Pope Francis’s pontificate, just over a year ago, Antoni Gaudi was declared a “Venerable” (one stage before being declared a “Blessed”) on the path to canonization. As a miracle is awaited to further advance the process, some of Gaudi’s followers have posited that the grandeur of Sagrada Família itself should count as a miracle to canonize the “Architect of God.” And while this poetic idea is worth a smile and a laugh, it also presents us an interesting question: why does the Church declare certain people saints?

In our internet age, we easily focus on a Church figure’s external acts, such as St. Teresa of Calcutta founding the Missionaries of Charity, or Pope St. John Paul II’s brilliant books and encyclicals. Similarly, one may easily associate Gaudi’s cause for canonization with Sagrada Família.

Yet while honoring the beautiful works of these holy leaders, we must remember that sanctity’s essence lies not in what the person does, but who the person is. The Church does not canonize artists for their creativity; nor does She canonize theologians for their intellect; nor does She canonize founders of religious orders for their leadership skills. Sanctity—whether it be recognized by canonization or not—consists in an interior conformity to Christ in charity, which is manifested through acts that may be very public, or very hidden. 

If Gaudi is canonized (as I hope him to be), this will be the reason why. And just as Gaudi built up designs for one of the world’s most marvelous churches, I pray that the postulators for his cause can help uncover some beautiful, hidden facts about the holy son of the Church who was Antoni Gaudi, that we may see, admire, and imitate the love of God that animated his wondrous work on Sagrada Família, which will inspire countless Christians for generations to come.

Venerable Antoni Gaudi, Architect of God, pray for us!

Photo by Csaba Veres on Unsplash

The world is experiencing a dramatic shift in how economies work and people live because of the emergence of Artificial Intelligence. Such an enormous shift has not occurred since the Industrial Revolution, which changed nearly everything about how people lived.  None of us individually can change the course of human history or the effect of certain technologies. Our practical realm of influence is limited. Yet God has given each of us an indispensable work to do, and that work comes out of who we are in Him.  

A recent intercession in Evening Prayer read:

Lord, it is your will that men use their minds to unlock nature’s secrets and master the world, …May the arts and sciences advance your glory and the happiness of all peoples.

This intention deserves a big AMEN as Pope Leo XIV draws the world’s attention to the crucial importance of caring for the dignity of all people as AI’s raw power emerges. As the prayer says, we are called to use our minds, not outsource our thinking to machines.

Last November Pope Leo spoke to the U.S. National Youth Conference, saying:

Use (AI) in such a way that if it disappeared tomorrow, you would still know how to think, how to create, how to act on your own…

With these words he is warning us not to allow AI to rob us of something integral to our humanity for the sake of convenience or anything else.

Our Holy Father’s Letter to Us

In his new encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, Pope Leo admonishes that this neutral technological tool has the potential to be used for great good or great ill. It is our responsibility to use it to “advance God’s glory and the happiness of all peoples,” as the Evening Prayer intention concludes.

Having just begun to delve into Magnifica Humanitas, it is apparent that even the introduction is filled with wisdom and clarity on the confusing subject of AI and how mankind should approach it. Referring to humanity’s intentions for using Artificial Intelligence, Pope Leo offers two contrasting biblical images to reflect on:

The Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9):

…the people decided to build a city and a tower “with its top in the heavens”…they sought to guarantee stability and power for themselves, and above all to “make a name” for themselves. It was an impressive feat: a single language, a single technology, a single direction. However, the project…was conceived without reference to God, supported by a uniformity that eliminated diversity and that chose homogenization over communion…The result is not unity, but dispersion. Babel thus reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from self-affirmation, sacrifices human dignity for efficiency and aspires to reach heaven without God’s blessing.

The image of the Tower of Babel is contrasted to the Rebuilding of the Walls of Jerusalem (Neh. 2-6):

…Nehemiah…received news of the disastrous state of his ancestral city. Before taking action, he fasted, prayed and interceded for the people. He then asked the king for permission to return to Jerusalem and, upon arriving, examined the destroyed areas in silence. He did not impose solutions from above. He convened the families, assigned each of them a section of the wall to rebuild, listened to their concerns, coordinated their efforts and addressed any opposition. The narrative shows how the city is reborn, not through the initiative of one man, but through the shared responsibility of all: men, women, priests, artisans, heads of households and young people all play a part. It is an undertaking with God at the center, which rebuilds relationships before rebuilding with stones. Thus, ancient Jerusalem rediscovers a common language—not one of uniformity, but one of communion, namely the harmony that arises when all persons assume their own role and recognize that their strength comes from the Lord.

Our Holy Father then invites us to bring the Holy Spirit into this transitional era of history to:

…avoid the “Babel syndrome,” namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language—even a digital one—can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance.

The introduction of the encyclical then turns to the foundational ideas which must be upheld for AI to, “build for the common good.” Included is an idea related to the importance of each of us responding as Nehemiah did, not outsourcing our thinking or our responsibility and not building our own little towers of Babel:

…building a world in which everyone can flourish requires shared responsibility and courage….All are given their own section of the wall.

Concluding his introduction, Pope Leo encourages us to “remain human”:

In the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human.

Behaving like Nehemiah: Responding to Dehumanizing Effects of AI

Only in following the prayerful model of Nehemiah can we play our part and answer our Holy Father’s call to remain human and help “rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.” We are called to begin our work in prayerful union with God, in cooperation with others who are also seeking the common good, and seeking to rebuild their section of the wall.

When we trust God and live a life of union with Him and communion with His people, we cease building our own individual towers and begin restoring the walls of inner-peace, inner Jerusalem. Through deeper prayer and relationship with God we will rebuild those walls day by day and brick by brick while each of us becomes the unique, not homogenous, persons God created us to be. Following the model laid out by Nehemiah of fasting, prayer, obedience to God and rightful authority, listening to and cooperating with others, we will advance in God’s grace wherever He is leading us.

As we rebuild the walls of Jerusalem in our own hearts and souls, we necessarily avoid building ourselves into towers of Babel without reference to God. This internal orientation will lead us to use any tool and all technology in ways that give God glory and serve humanity well. We will naturally desire to treat others as God treats us, as His beloveds to love, not as commodities to be manipulated and used.

Let us do our part. Let us not outsource our thinking and thereby degenerate our humanity. Let us begin our works with prayer and in communion with God’s people. Let us use AI and all technologies and tools at the service of God’s glory and of mankind’s good. And let us rebuild the walls of the City of God’s Peace brick by brick and day by day, no matter how the landscape of our time in history may shift and change.

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Every image of the Sacred Heart is familiar: the flames, the thorns, the pierced and burning heart of Christ. We see it on prayer cards, in statues and paintings, and recognize immediately what it means. To hear the words “Behold this heart, that so loved men” seems logical and proper. What more fitting image of Christ’s love than His pierced heart, on fire with divine love for creation? There is no better singular representation of the reality of both the Cross and Easter.

Like the crucifix, our desire to bring the Sacred Heart into our homes and lives, to devote ourselves to it, necessitates compromise; we would no more erect a scale model of a crucifix than we would have an anatomically accurate heart on our mantle. Like the crucifix, a conditional symbolism is accepted which is neither imprudent nor improper. It is merely the reality that man can imitate the mystical to a limited degree, and that a humble attempt at devotion is better than none.

We know what the crucifix around our neck and above our doorway represents. Even though they are clean and polished, they are not sterile. The absence of God’s blood does not diminish either the symbol or the reality of what it depicts.

Yet as I studied the Sacred Heart and its images and various avenues of devotion to it, I could not help but feel that, while I was repeating the words, “Behold this heart, that so loved men,” they were little more than sterile syllables. I sensed that there was more than the physical necessity and emotional weight the heart represented.

When I was encouraged to explore devotion to the Sacred Heart, I knew nothing about it apart from the images I had often seen. I read books about it and studied saints with particular devotion to it. Yet I still did not understand it. It remained a kind of academic entity, something I had knowledge of but limited experience with.

If the crucifix recalled the horror of Christ’s death and the glory of His resurrection, what did the Sacred Heart point toward? What was I missing that God wanted me to see?

I knew I would not find the answers in books or any insight I might find on my own. As I have done so many times before, I brought these questions before the Lord in Adoration.

In the quiet chapel, God offered an image to contemplate. It was not an answer to write down but a truth to enter into.

I saw the earth from a distance, the size of an orange. Behind it, enormous, the Sacred Heart. There was no space it did not occupy, no room for anything else. It touched all, was all.

“Behold this heart…”

In beholding it, a flash of Scripture:

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Col. 1:16-17)

Here was God’s great heart, not a consoling image, not a symbol of His sympathy or shared humanity, but something cosmic. The devotion had never asked me to behold a feeling. It had asked me to behold the love by which everything that exists continues to exist, the burning center that holds the atoms and the galaxies, the living and the dead, in being.

I was not contemplating Jesus’ fist-sized human heart but the heart that holds all things together.

The function of the images, the purpose of the devotion, is not a theological treatise but another avenue to know and experience God. The prayer cards are not wrong. The statues are not insufficient. They are small windows, and windows are not meant to contain the view. They only frame it, giving us somewhere to place our eyes until we can bear to look more fully.

A year has passed, and the image still arrives unbidden. It returns when I do not expect or look for it, enormous and occupying all things, and I pause. I pause because the words are no longer sterile. It is not a quaint devotion, but an invitation to remember and behold something we cannot completely comprehend.

Photo by NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash

My wife once heard some excellent advice: look for men who want to be husbands, not for men who just want wives.

Having a wife is tremendous. She provides encouragement and emotional support. She turns a house into a home. She is a companion to share your interests and struggles with, and she’s a key part to starting your own family. It’s no surprise then that the great majority of single men hope to get married. This is especially true now given the increased reporting of loneliness and social isolation among men.

But a man who desires to be married shouldn’t “just” want a wife. He must want to be a husband as well.

The key word there is “want.” It is not enough for a man to realize that it is just for him to be a husband in order to obtain a wife. He must want to be a husband. He must look at the Cross, see how Our Lord gave Himself for His bride the Church, and think “I want to imitate Him.” Meanwhile, the man who wants a wife has his attention focused entirely on the benefits that a wife will provide him, instead of what he wants to give to her.

When looking at what the Church says on marriage, there is a repeated emphasis on the Cross. St. Pope John Paul II wrote that “marriage sets the couple on a path where they will encounter the cross.” Pope Leo XIII specifies that a husband and wife must “give one another an unfailing and unselfish help.”

This sacrifice isn’t to be limited. When looking to the Cross, we don’t see a partial or limited sacrifice, we see an overwhelming and unlimited one. We also see a sacrifice that was full of love to a bride that is sometimes less than stellar in return. St. John Chrysostom points this out in his writings on marriage, teaching that a husband should continue to devote himself to his wife even if she doesn’t do the same. He reminds us that Christ’s bride has not earned the love He offers, and yet He gives it anyway, always ready to forgive, always providing, always devoted. A husband ought to do the same, because he truly loves his wife.

This talk of sacrifice must also be grounded in the reality that people are unique. If a man feels called to marriage, it’s still not enough to want to be a husband, he must want to be a husband to his wife in particular. Contrary to what a lot of dating culture (especially some dating apps) might imply, he shouldn’t be on the lookout for a woman who checks off all the requirements on his list, who’s “good enough” to marry. He needs to look for the woman he loves so intensely that he will happily sacrifice for her.

When a man becomes a husband, he becomes someone’s husband. He’s not a husband in general, but solely and completely to his wife. His life is committed to her, and she becomes irreplaceable to him.

This is an important point that both people need to consider when discerning marriage. Men, is this the woman you would gladly sacrifice your remaining days for, no matter how demanding that might be? In the event that the circumstances demanded it, would you give up a hobby and free time for her, not just because she needs you to, but because you really want to?

Women, is this man someone who you could see doing that for you? Is he someone who is more than happy to be your husband, no matter the sacrifices that might entail? Is his desire to be a husband focused on you in particular, not just in the abstract? Is he someone who will spend more time working if the family needs it, or less time working (and more time with family) if it’s for the good of the family?

Of course this discernment should be flipped the other way around as well, and both should additionally consider if this is someone who should be the parent of their own children.

Women seeking marriage must be sure to look for a man who really wants to be a husband. There has never been a shortage of horror stories of abusive, infantile, or just extremely lazy men who married primarily out of loneliness, convenience, or lust. In the encyclical Casti Connubii, Pope Pius XI emphasized the importance of choosing a partner in marriage, for it “depends a great deal whether the forthcoming marriage will be happy or not, since one may be to the other either a great help in leading a Christian life, or, a great danger and hindrance.” He adds that their discernment must be based in “a true and noble love and by a sincere affection for the future partner.”

Earlier in the same encyclical, he also emphasizes preparation, since “the basis of a happy wedlock, and the ruin of an unhappy one, is prepared and set in the souls of boys and girls during the period of childhood and adolescence.” He says those who indulge in impure desires before marriage without working to overcome them “will find themselves left alone with their own unconquered passions.”

This means that men who want to be husbands will be pursuing improvement and attempting to root out their ties to sin (especially lust!). They will be, to the extent that they are able, working on developing skills so that they can provide, caring for their own health, devoting time to prayer, and setting aside appropriate time for hobbies. They may not have mastered all of these, or even one of these, but they will be struggling towards holiness as best they can.

Women, do not merely look for a man who wants a wife. Look for a man who wants to be your husband.

Photo by Dmitry Rodionov on Unsplash

The Calgary Herald created a stir some time ago when it printed a cartoon characterization of Bishop Henry. It was the newspaper’s response to the bishop’s condemnation of abortion. I found myself in the center of the storm facing a team of the newspaper’s writers and editors. I set them back a little when I mentioned that their ill-advised treatment of the good bishop had become an international embarrassment.

It was an interesting and memorable confrontation. Bishop Henry was simply doing what he was supposed to be doing, defending all human life, including the unborn as well as those who were born. The Herald was doing what it was not supposed to be doing, unjustly lampooning an innocent man. The irony was that the unauthorized was castigating the authorized. There was tension in the air, but our meeting ended on a cordial note. The team, at least most of them, had recognized that some of my comments had merit. The newspaper’s action in vilifying Bishop Henry, nonetheless, struck me as a case in which the outlaw tells the sheriff what he should do.

I made my transition from the Press to the Chancery where I offered Bishop Henry my sympathies. He responded with thanks, but told me that he has “thick skin” and the ruckus did not get to him. There was a silver lining, however, to the abuse that was heaped upon him. It led to his acceptance of many speaking engagements he would not have received otherwise. I offered him, as a consolation and a gesture of friendship, a book of poetry I penned entitled, Patches of God-light. It is a collection of poems about sharing the light and the many ways in which we can enlighten the lives of others. Bishop Henry’s “sin” was trying to share the light among people who preferred to remain in the dark.

Light exposes the cockroaches in the kitchen. This can prove unsettling. But dousing the light does not remove the pests. Remaining in the dark is not a solution. We should be grateful for the light because it allows us to perceive the situation realistically and move in the direction of a positive resolution. Enlightenment is the first step in cleaning the kitchen.

Plato, in his Dialogue, Gorgias, presents an imaginary, but instructive, example of injustice. He has a cook prosecute a doctor before a jury of children. The cook speaks to the children and accuses the doctor of “giving you the bitterest potions and compels you to hunger and thirst.” He reminds the jury of “the variety of meats and sweets on which I have feasted you.” Naturally, the children will side with the cook. In his defense, the doctor would say, “All these evil things, my boys, I did for your health.” His defense, however, would not release him from his predicament. The jury of children, an image of the unenlightened masses, would laugh and side with the cook.

Bishop Henry is the doctor. The Calgary Herald is the cook. Readers of the newspaper represent the unenlightened children. Injustice reigns when the incidental takes precedence over the essential. In the example Plato offers, taste is given priority over health. To approve abortion, by comparison, is to place convenience over the life of the unborn. When the light leads to ridicule and laughter, injustice reigns.

In 1832, while John Henry Newman was in Sicily, he had fallen victim to a severe fever which lasted for three weeks. Utterly convinced he was going to die, he made final arrangements with his Italian servant. In a memorandum he wrote many years later, Newman recalled the unlikely and unexpected words he kept saying to himself during the time of his critical illness: “I shall not die. I shall not die, for I have not sinned against the light…God has still a work for me to do.” He lived another 58 years doing God’s work by sharing His light. In 2019, was declared a saint.

In John 1:4-9, Jesus proclaims, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John the Evangelist states in 3:19, that “light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” Light, of course, is illuminating. It allows us to see what is, thereby allowing us to participate more fully in the glory of God’s creation. The battle continues to rage, however, between the children of light and the children of darkness.

On September 23, 2022, 20 armed federal agents raided the home of Mark Houck. Houck was arrested in front of his family and interrogated for six hours. What was his crime to precipitate such extraordinary action on the part of these gun-wielding agents? He was a pro-life activist who prayed in front of a Planned Parenthood facility. The incident cried out for justice. Four years later, Mark Houck was acquitted of charges and awarded a $1 million settlement. Justice was slow to arrive, but it did arrive, though it did not compensate for what happened to Houck, his wife, and their children. As a pro-life advocate, Houck and his family were merely trying to share the light with the world.

Justice requires enlightenment. But all too often it reveals something that people do not want to know. When the Culture of Light meets the Culture of Darkness, justice becomes the issue. Those brave hearts who want to share the light must be as courageous as they are generous.

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

We have recently celebrated the great solemnity of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit is identified as the power source of the Church for all generations. We know this event ripples outward through space and time, impacting each of us who are disciples of Jesus, and the world through us. It is appropriate and necessary, then, to consider the full implication of this gift, pondering the ways our lives are impacted and transformed many centuries later.

As we make this consideration, we begin by recognizing that the Gift of the Holy Spirit is preceded by the ministry and work of Jesus Christ. One of Jesus’ most perplexing teachings helps us understand the effect of the Holy Spirit most fully. While He was being questioned by scribes and Pharisees about the application of the old law, Our Lord remarked:

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, “The old is good.” (Lk. 5:37-39)

The basic spiritual truth at play is quite easy to discern in Jesus’ words. One biblical scholar states it succinctly as he concludes his commentary on this passage. The point of Jesus’ words, he writes, “is that people, such as the Pharisees, who are satisfied with the good things of the old, such as the law, are not very willing to accept the fulfillment of those things in the New Covenant that Jesus establishes” (Gadenz, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture: The Gospel of Luke, 121). The explanation he provides is satisfying in regards to the old and new covenants. But what about the connection to the Holy Spirit and Pentecost?

That connection is found in the homilies and commentaries of the Church Fathers, the great Christian teachers of antiquity. Among these ancient teachers was St. Cyril of Alexandria, who made the connection as he preached a homily on this portion of St. Luke’s Gospel. He taught:

Those who live according to the law cannot receive the institutions of Christ. These institutions cannot be admitted into the hearts of such as have not yet received the renewing by the Holy Spirit. …Those, therefore, who adhere to it and keep at heart the antiquated commandment have no share in the new order of things… (from Ancient Christian Commentary on Sacred Scripture: Luke, 97)

This sheds more light on Jesus’ comment about the lack of desire for new wine because of the affinity for the old. What Jesus meant, and what St. Cyril expounded, is that the old law—like old wineskins—has reached its full measure and served its purpose. It still has value, but it cannot serve as the repository for the “new thing” the Heavenly Father is doing through Jesus Christ prophesied by Isaiah. This new reality “springs forth” without being perceived by those who are intently focused on the letter of the law rather than its spirit (Is. 43:18-19).

After St. Cyril, an unidentified preacher in sixth-century Africa made the connection even more specific. His sermon (included in the Office of Readings for Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter, the day immediately before Pentecost) connected the Pentecost event to this Gospel passage.

So when the disciples were heard speaking in all kinds of languages, some people were not far wrong in saying: They have been drinking too much new wine. The truth is that the disciples has now become fresh wineskins renewed and made holy by grace. The new wine of the Holy Spirit filled them, so that their fervor brimmed over and they spoke in manifold tongues.

The connection is now full and solid. The Holy Spirit—the one who descends to guide the Church through history—is the new wine that will make us ready for the new thing Jesus intends to do. And, Jesus’ disciples must become the new wineskins to contain and carry that new wine to the world.

Thus, we are impelled to consider how this biblical, historical reality impacts our lives. That, of course, is by our personal participation in the Pentecost event, the Sacrament of Confirmation. In that sacramental liturgy, a disciple participates, substantially, in the original Pentecost in Jerusalem in A.D. 33. This is the moment each of us is filled with the new wine of the Holy Spirit (see Acts 2:13; Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 1288).

Following the grace of Pentecost and Confirmation, the question becomes whether or not any of us, individually, will be transformed from old skins to new by this outpouring. There are at least a couple specific ways we can facilitate such transformation. First, it is only possible by remaining rooted in the Eucharist and Reconciliation. Second, coupled with sacraments, we need to pray for this ongoing transformation.

The Prayer to the Holy Spirit (the one all of us seem to know in a different version…) is just one way to pray for such transformation. “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful,” just as you filled the hearts of the Apostles on Pentecost, and just as wine is poured into skins. “Lord, send forth your Spirit, and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.” The Holy Spirit comes to bring re-creation and renewal, which all of us need to become fit receptacles of God’s “new thing.” “…and ever rejoice in His consolation.” Consolation is a palpable experience of joy and fulfillment that often carries euphoric feelings akin to imbibing wine in a convivial environment. No wonder the bystanders at Pentecost thought the disciples were tipsy.

Finally, we ought to recognize that the new wine poured into us will transform us over time, in a way similar to wine made from grapes does. Indeed, like great wine, we need that process of development to become really exceptional. As each of us responds to grace and grows over time, we really are able to notice the Gifts of the Holy Spirit working on us. These are the completion and perfection of the virtues that bring us to perfection as disciples. They are the loftiest virtues we exhibit in our daily lives (see CCC 1831). We also notice the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which are “first fruits of eternal glory” (CCC 1832). These fruits are the good qualities we pour out into the world, like the qualities of good wine being poured out into a glass. As a wine drinker first notices the “nose” of a particular vintage poured into a glass, so the world notices the fragrance of eternal life already being spread in this life.

All this might bring us to a greater appreciation for good wine. More importantly, it should bring us to a greater appreciation for our own Confirmations; and it should excite us for being transformed into new wineskins that can convey the newness, power, richness, and beauty of the Holy Spirit to a world that may not even realize its need. Just be aware that, along the way, people on the outside may think us a little crazy.

Photo by Joëlle B Vasseur on Unsplash

For some Catholics, carrying the reverence, faith, and grace they feel during Sunday Mass with them into their busy weeks can prove difficult. The peace and beauty of the Mass is a welcome respite from the pace and distortions of life in the modern world. However, a respite is all that it is for many Catholics who lead stressful lives. They cling to that one hour on a Sunday morning as one would to a life raft adrift in a raging sea of noise, distractions, temptations, and darkness. Once Monday rolls around, they tread water the best that they can until the raft drifts back into view the following week. So, the question becomes: what bridges the gap between the lives we live for an hour each Sunday at Mass and the lives we live for the rest of the week?

One of the most powerful tools the Catholic can employ is the regular practice of personal pieties. These devotions can carry the Mass far past Sunday morning and deep into the week. They can be used by the faithful not only to re-center their days on Christ but also to tap into the peace and faith of the Mass. The Catechism clearly encourages the practice of personal piety, provided it is grounded in Church teaching and the Church’s liturgical life (CCC 1674-176).

When used properly, personal pieties are invaluable. These personal devotions should never take the place of regular Mass attendance and the reception of the Sacraments. But they should not be shied away from or discounted for their spiritual efficacy.

Unfortunately, the nature of modern life in the West dictates that our priorities don’t normally focus on our prayer and spiritual wellbeing, and ultimately the final destinations of our souls. This is ironic, as through all of the noise and distractions, the fragility of life is always before us.

Whether it is in our own lives and the people we know or through endless media, our senses are inundated with images and stories dealing with death. We are acutely aware of the fact that tomorrow is never guaranteed, and therefore, we ought to be mindful of the decisions we make today.

Still, some do not explore the world of personal devotion as a means to shore up spiritual health in the same manner as they would when it comes to researching vitamins, motivational podcasts, and gym memberships. While the physical and mental health of individuals is obviously important, if not considered as important, the spirit can be damaged, and the very source of our lives, Christ, becomes a distant, periodic voice rather than a constant conversation partner.

Devotions, according to the Catechism, should “extend the liturgical life…not replace it” (CCC 1675). Personal devotions can help ensure our Mass attendance and reverence in prayer by being those little motivators that point us to the bigger picture. While we cannot simply say a Rosary instead of attending Mass on a Sunday when the weather is particularly adversarial or when we stayed up too late binging a streaming series the night before, we can rely on the Rosary, Divine Mercy Chaplet, different devotions to saints, prayer routines, etc., to strengthen our resolve to attend Mass regardless of the weather or our lack of sleep.

Personal pieties, practiced with the express intention of bringing us into a deeper relationship with Christ and the Sacramental life of the Church, should always point to the Eucharist and Mass attendance as the ultimate form of devotion.

Imagine a scenario where you are more excited for Sunday morning than you are for Friday night. It may seem impossible, but with firm reliance on the divine and our personal pieties as conduits for grace and strength, it is not only possible but almost guaranteed.

The devotions we choose to take on ought to fit where we are in our lives most practically. For some, it is impossible to take on certain devotions that require time that they simply do not have. For others, physical limitations might be a major concern as to what they can realistically take on. The first step is to examine where we are and, from there, discern a reasonable expectation to place upon ourselves.

Whatever personal pieties we decide to take on, consistency ought to be paramount. For that reason, taking on too much right away may not be the best course of action for some. It is better to adopt devotions that we can express faithfully and practice routinely than it is to attempt more arduous spiritual therapies and programs that come with periodic bursts of zeal and then eventually fade away.

The entire purpose of taking on a personal devotion is to enhance our faith lives and spur us on to spiritual perseverance. Not to frustrate us and lead to possible feelings of shame and guilt if we do not live up to the expectations that we have placed on ourselves.

Along with consistency, we must understand that there will be days that, due to any number of reasons, we may not be able to perform our devotions fully, or in a manner that we have prescribed. Those instances must be met with patience and a resolve to carry on the next day with an even stronger desire to bring glory to God through our actions and prayers.

It can be too easy, at times, to pull away from the devotions and practices we place on ourselves due to a sense of guilt or shame born from the times when we fall short. However, it is in those moments that Christ calls to us in the sweetest, mildest ways. It requires a quiet heart to hear Him and to allow Him to wipe away our false notions of ourselves and replace them with a desire to love Him in a manner that shores up our faith in what we are capable of.

Whatever we decide to take on as personal pieties should be something that we look forward to and enjoy. Anything that we do that enhances our experience of the divine is to be celebrated and cherished.

After practicing our devotions faithfully, we will see the fruits of the Spirit more clearly in our lives. The world becomes quieter. Mass becomes even more precious to us. Christ, His Mother, and His saints get deeply involved in our lives because we have personally opened the door to our hearts and invited them in. We give Him the time He deserves in our lives throughout the course of our weeks, months, and years. We strive to grow closer to Him in our devotions as a means to ensure an eternal life with Him.

The saints didn’t become holy by Sunday Mass alone, but by cultivating a constant relationship with God through daily practices. We need to do the same.

Photo by Anuja Tilj on Unsplash

Modern Christians often feel that the city is almost impossible to evangelize. The city is fast, distracted, anonymous, commercial, restless, and increasingly secular. It does not seem to lend itself naturally to contemplation. It does not seem to leave much room for silence, liturgy, memory, or prayer.

For this reason, many Christian thinkers have looked with sympathy toward the countryside. Christopher Dawson, reflecting on the origins of Christian culture in Europe, often saw rural life as a more natural setting for cultural and spiritual formation. The countryside preserves memory more easily. It follows the rhythm of nature. It allows family, locality, work, and worship to remain visibly connected. Roger Scruton, in a different but related way, also saw in rural life a privileged place for continuity, inherited affection, and resistance to the fragmentation of modernity.

There is much truth in this. In much of medieval Europe, especially in France, Germany, and England, Christian culture was deeply shaped by monastic life outside the great cities. The monastery ordered the land. It sanctified time. It taught work, prayer, discipline, and memory. In many cases, the monastery came before the town; the town grew around the monastery.

But Italy followed a somewhat different path. The Italian city was never merely a necessary evil or a symbol of spiritual decline. From the medieval communes onward, the city became one of the great places where Christian culture took visible form. Universities, guilds, churches, law, commerce, art, and civic life were woven together in the urban fabric. Florence, Milan, Bologna, Siena, Venice, Rome, and countless smaller cities were not simply places of secularization. They were also places where Christian civilization became architecture, painting, music, preaching, law, and public life.

This is the context in which Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso Cardinal Schuster becomes so important. Schuster, Archbishop of Milan from 1929 to 1954, was one of the great episcopal figures of twentieth-century Italy. Yet he was not first formed as a diocesan administrator, public figure, or ecclesiastical politician. He was formed as a Benedictine monk. Before he governed Milan, he had learned the order of the cloister.

This is the key to understanding him. Schuster did not leave the monastery behind when he became archbishop. He carried the monastery into the city. For him, the passage from abbey to episcopal residence was not a rupture but a transposition. What he had learned in monastic life—silence, discipline, liturgy, obedience, order, and the primacy of God—had to become the measure of his pastoral government. Milan, with its industrial force, political tensions, economic power, and modern restlessness, was not the opposite of the monastery. It was the place where the monastic principle had to be expanded.

This gives us a striking image: the city as monastery. Of course, this does not mean that the city literally becomes a cloister. It means that urban life, too, can be ordered toward God. The monastery is not holy because it is isolated. It is holy because its time, space, work, and relationships are centered on divine worship. If that is true, then the city can also be sanctified—not by fleeing its complexity, but by giving it a spiritual center.

For Schuster, that center was the liturgy. The liturgy was not, for him, one pastoral activity among others. It was not decoration, nostalgia, or ceremonial excess. It was the heart of the Church’s life. The Church is built from the altar outward, not from committees, strategies, or activism. When worship is central, time is no longer merely productivity. Space is no longer merely function. Human life is no longer reduced to work, consumption, and distraction.

The liturgy teaches the city how to breathe again. This is why Schuster’s Benedictine soul mattered so much. Like St. Benedict, he understood that Christian life begins with order: order of time, order of worship, order of the soul, order of charity. The modern city is often disordered because it has lost its center. Schuster’s answer was not to imitate the city’s restlessness, but to bring the city back to the altar.

Here the feast of the Epiphany gives us a beautiful key. Among the gifts of the Magi, gold has always been understood as a sign of Christ’s kingship. But gold also has another meaning. Gold does not create light. It receives and reflects it. Its brilliance depends on a source beyond itself.

This is an image of the Church. It is also an image of the Christian city. The Church does not generate her own splendor. She receives the light of Christ and reflects it into the world. She does not invent meaning. She recognizes the glory already present in the Child of Bethlehem and offers that glory back in worship. The city, too, becomes Christian not when it boasts of its own power, wealth, or creativity, but when it learns to reflect a light it cannot produce.

This is why Schuster’s liturgical vision was not ritualism. It was realism. Without worship, the city becomes opaque. It closes in on itself. It becomes a place of noise, production, ambition, politics, and exhaustion. But with worship at its center, even a modern metropolis can become like gold placed before the light. It shines not by its own virtue, but by participation.

This is also why Schuster was not detached from history. His liturgical and monastic soul did not make him passive before the tragedies of the twentieth century. On the contrary, it gave him the interior freedom to act with prudence and firmness during war, destruction, and reconstruction. His authority was not ideological. It was spiritual. He knew that public action without interior order becomes frantic. He also knew that holiness is not an escape from responsibility, but its deepest foundation.

This is a lesson the Church urgently needs today. In many cities, Catholics are tempted in two opposite directions. Some want to adapt entirely to urban secular culture, as though the Church must become more restless, more managerial, more fashionable, and more activist in order to survive. Others want simply to retreat, treating the city as spiritually lost.

Schuster offers another way. The task is not to make the Church more worldly in order to fit the city. Nor is it simply to abandon the city. The task is to restore spiritual order within the city. The city must be evangelized not first by programs, but by worship; not first by noise, but by the sacred; not first by strategy, but by the presence of God.

This does not mean that institutions, schools, charities, preaching, and social action are unimportant. Schuster himself was a pastor, not a museum piece. But all these works must flow from the altar. When they do not, they become activism. When they do, they become culture.

Christopher Dawson understood that culture is not created by technique alone. It grows from worship, memory, moral formation, and a shared vision of the sacred. A civilization cannot be carried forward by one brilliant individual alone. Genius itself is the fruit of a particular culture. Great men receive before they create. They are formed by families, schools, liturgies, languages, symbols, and traditions that precede them.

Schuster embodied this truth. He was not a solitary genius inventing a new Christianity for the modern city. He was a son of St. Benedict, of Roman liturgy, of Milanese Catholic life, and of the great tradition of the Church. His greatness lay in receiving that inheritance so deeply that he could transmit it creatively in a new historical moment.

That is what the Church must recover. The modern city will not be saved by becoming louder than the world. It will not be renewed by pastoral restlessness or cultural imitation. It will be renewed when Christians remember that the city, too, can become a place of sanctification. Its streets, churches, schools, homes, hospitals, offices, and public spaces can be reordered when they are placed again under the light of Christ.

Like the gold of the Magi, the Church is called to reflect a light she has received. She does not need to invent her own brilliance. She needs to stand before Christ and shine with His. Cardinal Schuster reminds us that even the metropolis can become monastic—not by ceasing to be a city, but by rediscovering its center, and that center is the altar.

Photo by Germán Rodríguez on Unsplash

Jesus was and is a healer. He healed when He walked among us and has continued to do so for two thousand years. He heals through love and empathy. The accounts of Jesus’ healing in the Gospels describe agape, or “descending love” according to Pope Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas Est. (The opposite being eros, or “ascending love,” the word used in most non-Christian ancient literature.) And as the Apostle John declared in his first letter, Ο Θεός είναι αγάπη: “God is love.”

The Greek and Roman Art of Healing

By the first century, Greek and Roman physicians had been practicing the art of healing for hundreds of years. The philosopher Plutarch argued that Homer was something of a physician and that the Iliad and Odyssey showcase an understanding of the physician’s art.

The greatest ancient physician was the fifth century B.C. Greek Hippocrates, whose legacy lasted for over two thousand years. Hippocrates was an asclepiad on the Aegean island of Cos; the asclepiads were self-described descendants and disciples of the first healer, Asclepios, who was subsequently deified according to Greek mythology.

Hippocrates was an empirical observer of disease more than a healer, but he inspired a variety of healers that included Erasistratus, the third century physician who studied not only physical causes of disease but nervous and emotional causes as well. The Platonic vision of the combination of the body and soul, inspired in part by divine love, Eros, resulted in a commensurate approach to medicine. In perusing the Hippocratic Corpus and other ancient sources, however, the reader does not encounter the kind of empathetic healing of Jesus.

The Transformational Power of Jesus’ Healing

The synoptic gospels provide several examples of Jesus’ healing in quick succession. In the Gospel of Matthew chapter eight, for example, Jesus healed by touching. A leper approached Him asking for healing, to which Jesus replied by touching the leper and saying, “Be thou healed,” and the man’s leprosy vanished. Likewise, when He went to Peter’s house and saw that Peter’s mother suffered from fever, He touched her and the fever left her. That same day the demon-possessed came before Him, and “he expelled the spirits with a word.”

Soon after, Jesus healed a women suffering from incessant bleeding by her merely touching the hem of His garment. The Gospel of Mark explained that Jesus felt power (Greek dynamin) flow from Him, which is how He knew the woman had touched His garment, even though He was in the middle of a crowd. Jesus’ healing, according to the synoptics, involved touch, words, and sensations of a healing power that emanated from Him.

The most astonishing example of Jesus’ healing was when He healed a man possessed by demons who lived on the eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee, in the Decapolis. In this episode, Jesus arrived in a place where the prohibitions and attitudes of the people were not Jewish, but rather part of the Hellenistic culture of the eastern Mediterranean that developed after the conquests of Alexander the Great.

The people at the time were influenced by the traditional Greco-Roman pantheon of anthropomorphic deities that intermixed with humans who worshipped them by sacrifice in temples. The growth of mystery religions differed from this traditional polytheism by the worship of sometimes single deities, like Isis or Cybele. These worshippers were initiated into mysteries that only the initiates could enjoy. The mystery religions typically promised eternal life.

Jesus was approached by a man who had been influenced by this Hellenistic culture. Interestingly, the man groveled before Him in an act, called proskynesis, typical of religions influenced by Asian culture. Having never seen Jesus, this man nevertheless knew Him to have the spirit of the divine upon Him, and thus cried out, “what have you to do with me, Jesus son of God the most high?”

According to the different accounts in the synoptic gospels, the man was a savage who lived among the tombs of the dead; even chains could not hold his demon-possessed strength. Indeed, when Jesus asked his name the man replied, Legion, evoking both the multitude of demons possessing him and the strength of a Roman military unit.

Jesus allowed the demons to flee from the man into a nearby heard of swine, which stampeded into the lake and drowned. People arrived from one of the ten towns of the Decapolis, and they witnessed that the formerly crazed lunatic was now sitting next to Jesus, rational and calm.

How could such a transformation take place?

Although the Greek word sympatheia is not used, the story nevertheless implies it in Jesus’ approach to healing the man. His healing relied on empathy, the quality by which a person is able to feel what another feels. But even more, Jesus could feel, sense, intuit, know all about this poor, distraught man overwhelmed by his past, and the countless images of trauma and horror that had so disabled his mind.

One’s past experiences can accumulate at times into tumultuous waves and spasms of crippling fear. Christ understood this: “Somehow or other, Jesus took upon himself Legion’s fears, insecurities, memories, past, and sin, and through love and empathy broke the weight of the past to make the present endurable and the future possible” (Lawson, 2019). Jesus was able to transform, metamorphosize, this man, unknown except for his chosen appellation of Legion.

Physical and Spiritual Metamorphosis

Examples of metamorphosis are found often in ancient literature. Ovid’s Metamorphoses contains the stories of the Greek gods interacting with and changing humans. Lucius Apulius’ account of the man transformed into a donkey and saved by the mysteries of Isis was also titled Metamorphosis. Jesus’ healing of Legion was the same, a complete transformation, from sin, doubt, despair, and evil to hope, goodness, and love. This is truly an example of agape, or descending love, transformative love, of so loving another that such love heals, metamorphosizes a person into something completely different.

So complete was the change in the body, mind, and soul of Legion that he became arguably the first Apostle to the Gentiles. He wanted to join Jesus in His ministry, but Jesus commanded him to go among his people of Decapolis telling them of what he had experienced. When Jesus returned to the region later, so many people had heard of his healings that four thousand appeared, hungry for the preaching of the Word.

That other, more famous, apostle to the Gentiles, Paul of Tarsus, experienced a similar metamorphosis in his body and soul on the road to Damascus—this time by the risen Christ. The impact of Christ’s healing on Paul was similar to that of Legion.

Jesus was a physician unlike the many physicians of the ancient world. He was able to heal in a way that Hippocrates and Galen could not, because of His overwhelming empathy and love for the other. He healed body and mind of pain, crippling diseases, hate, despair, and hopelessness, accompanying the many illnesses that overwhelmed the people of the ancient world. Christ especially healed—and conquered—fear, including the greatest fear: death.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a CE original series on the History of Love, pursuing the meaning of love and our understanding of it throughout time.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The Holy Eucharist is a shocking teaching of the Catholic Church. Indeed, the Lord’s teaching on the Eucharist has been shocking from the beginning. Today, followers of Christ still have trouble believing in this unwavering teaching from Jesus and His Church: that He is truly present—Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity—under the appearances, or accidents, of bread and wine.

In 2020, a Pew Research Center poll revealed that only 31% of U.S. Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The remaining 69% of U.S. Catholics believed the Eucharist to be merely symbolic. These findings are both heartbreaking and shocking. However, I would propose that these proportions of believers have been constant since Jesus first preached about the subject.

In the Gospel of John, Chapter 6, Jesus preaches about the Eucharist to a large crowd of people. He directs His preaching to three important groups: (1) the Jews, (2) the Disciples, and (3) the Apostles. The reaction of each group is very telling as it pertains to the teaching of the True Presence in the Holy Eucharist.

The Jews

First, Jesus preaches to the Jews:

I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down out of heaven, so that anyone may eat from it and not die. I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats from this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I will give for the life of the world also is My flesh. (Jn. 6:48-51)

How did the Jews react?

The Jews began to argue with one another, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” (Jn. 6:52)

The Jews could not believe what He was saying. Indeed, many walked away and left Him on that day because of His stance on the Eucharist.

The Disciples

Next, Jesus preaches to the disciples:

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. The one who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. (Jn. 6:53-55)

How did the disciples react?

Many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”; Jesus, aware that His disciples were complaining about this, said to them, “Does this shock you?” […] As a result of this many of His disciples left, and would no longer walk with Him. (Jn. 6:60-61;66)

At this point, many people are walking away from Jesus—even the disciples, many of whom had followed Him for as much as two years. And He doesn’t stop them. Jesus could have said, “Wait! Wait! It’s just a symbol! Come back!” But He doesn’t. Jesus only presses further about the His Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist and even inquires of them: Does this shock you?

The Apostles

As many followers are walking away from Jesus, He then turns to the Apostles:

Jesus said to the twelve: “Do you also want to leave?”

This is a pivotal moment in the life of the Church. If the Apostles would have left at that moment, everything would have been over. Jesus could have go on to suffer, die, and be resurrected, but there would have been no one to spread His message. There would have been no Apostles (apóstolos meaning “to be sent”) to spread the Gospel to the world. Thankfully, the Apostles don’t leave Him:

Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.” (Jn. 6:67)

Peter responds with faith and trust, even without fully understanding. This could be the posture of many Catholics today. Perhaps we don’t fully understand the miracle of the Holy Eucharist, but we trust in Jesus and His teaching. We trust that He can do all things; even to feed us with Himself in this great Sacrament.

A Similar Proportion

Upon preaching to these three groups, the Lord Jesus looks upon a similar number that is still observed today. Roughly a third believed. And here is where the parallel with the Pew study is both intriguing: around 31% of Jesus’ audience stayed with Him after this teaching—just as 31% of Catholics today continue to believe in the Real Presence.

The Lord’s question still remains: Does this shock you? Jesus invites us to surrender our feeble, human understanding and trust in His Divine Word.

In a world that constantly sees everything as symbolic, the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist stands as a sacred scandal. It is the heart of Catholic worship. It is the source and summit of our Faith. And it is the test of discipleship.

Today, Jesus turns again to each one of us and asks: Do you also want to leave?

Let us, with St. Peter, respond the words of faith and love: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. Let us stay with Him, believe in Him, and adore Him—truly present in the Most Holy Eucharist.

Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash

Eucharistic Miracles are instances where consecrated bread and wine no longer appear as bread and wine. The veil of ordinary appearances is lifted, and we see, in a way our eyes of faith already trust, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Risen Lord, Jesus Christ. Though tradition assures us that these species are not the particular body and blood of our Blessed Lord, His presence remains, and not as a result of the miraculous intervention, but still by the words of consecration.

These miracles confront our doubt and our skepticism, they assuage our demand for scientific proof, they realign our attention to what is ordinarily miraculous, and remind us how merciful our God is to those of us who fail to take Him at His Word: “This is my Body…I will be with you always, until the end of the age.”

The CFO of the ministry which is gracious enough to employ me, Live Vertical, tells a poignant story about his experience at Lanciano, Italy. After an all-day excursion through holy sites in Assisi, Luke and his group finally arrive at Lanciano, right as the doors are closing, and find themselves face-to-face with the clotted Blood of our Blessed Lord.

Luke took his time gazing at the Miracle, a miracle that he had shared many times over to students and adults. His hungry and exhausted son wanted to find the nearest cafe and made this more or less known to his father. Luke, visibly moved to tears by the encounter with the Miracle, in a moment of frustration, did his best to impart to his 19-year-old son the significance of the moment. A significance to which his son responded, “Dad, I don’t know why you are so excited…we receive Jesus in the Eucharist at every Mass. I’m hungry, let’s go eat.”

I think of when Jesus heals the blind man with saliva-mud, having to reapply for the full effect. Eucharistic Miracles seem to be an inverse of this divine intervention. The veil which descends during the consecration fades, and what is sacramentally and truly present is made uniquely visible: the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. The miracle of consecration, then, is the true miracle, more miraculous than what our overstimulated human senses perceive to be miracles in these “Eucharistic Miracles.”

And yet, how seldom do we allow our sense of the divine to ascend to the forefront of our perception and be reminded of just how consequential this reality is? How often do we miss the ordinarily miraculous moments we encounter at least every single week?

In The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton recounts his time spent in Cazals, France, where the “disposition of everything around [him]…, the streets which all pointed inward to the center of town,” forced him to be “at least virtually conscious of the Church,” which contained “that Sacrament…the Christ living in our midst, and sacrificed by us, and for us and with us, in the clean and perpetual Sacrifice…Who holds our world together, and keeps us all from being poured headlong and immediately into the pit of our eternal destruction.”

“Oh, what a thing it is,” Merton exclaims, “to live in a place…where all the day long your eyes must turn, again and again, to the House that hides the Sacramental Christ…where several times each morning, under those high arches on the altar over the relics of the martyr, took place that tremendous, secret and obvious immolation, so secret that it will never be thoroughly understood by a created intellect, and yet so obvious that its very obviousness blinds us by excess of clarity: the unbloody Sacrifice of God under the species of bread and wine.”

Though Merton admittedly was not aware of this at the time, the landscape itself communicated this ultimate reality, which is entirely possible to miss despite how the world may or may not be configured around us. Commonplace, obvious, and ordinary, yet the very thing that holds our world together and keeps us from existential destruction, permits us to dwell in the same realm, to pass by without a second thought, to risk or even commit indifference, irreverence… 

It’s the humility of the sacrament that levels me. These moments of descending into the bread and the wine on altars throughout the centuries are dwarfed by the eternity Our Lord spends in glory.

In essence, this transformation doesn’t cost anything, so why be so amazed? What does it cost God to substitute the substance of common food and drink for a moment while remaining omnipotent, while remaining in glory, not at all affected by this momentary transformation?

What we find when the veil is torn is the assurance that this transformation is indeed not momentary, that He remains.

It was inevitable that God would become man as a result of our fallen state, on account of our brokenness and His loving kindness (cf. On the Incarnation § 6-10). But as to why He remains, this is where our reason fails. Why does the bread from heaven have to be Himself? Why does He remain and continue to be our source of life?

If we forgo the dramatic faith Our Lord calls us to in favor of human deduction, these questions will never be answered. This is theology born in the light of revealed reality, not the kind that tries to generate reality from our own reasoning. We begin with what Our Lord says and theologize in the wake. No amount of Biblical study, moral reasoning or otherwise could in essence produce the doctrine which surrounds the Holy Eucharist. Only what Our Lord says satisfies.

Our work is to “believe.” Belief is not blind; it is the cure for blindness. Without it, we cannot see properly. Without faith, we cannot move forward into what we can’t yet know. It is the key which unlocks the mystery of it all.

And this is what is revealed: inexplicably, not only does the Lord come to really dwell in what appears to be bread and wine, but He remains there. Furthermore, His remaining is by all means ordinary. Each and every operating Church, Chapel, and Oratory ordinarily contains a Tabernacle in which the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ ordinarily resides under a perfectly ordinary miracle which is performed at every perfectly ordinary Mass.

Not only does it seem impossible or impossibly complex to the naked eye of faith, to the worldly world of worldly people, it seems entirely unnecessary.

One might ask, “taking for granted that God exists, why then would He not only become a human being, provide us with incredible moral teaching and wisdom, free us from sin and death by dying a horrible death on the Cross, rise from the dead proving the victory, ascend into heaven and take His rightful place with the Father, and then choose to literally remain with His people, not as a person who can be in every place at once, but under the guise of simple bread and wine?”

The faithful bask in the radiance of this reality. Freed from an endless cycle of skepticism, a Catholic receives the work of Christ’s redemption through believing, and is free to enjoy the riches to which he is heir, which he did not earn or even request, and, without an amount of humility, would otherwise be refused on account of its inexplicable proportion.

For God, however, we are worth it—you are worth it—to remain. As St. Carlo Acutis framed the purpose of each Eucharistic Miracle he presented, these events “direct our attention to look beyond the appearances of bread and wine, and to the hidden reality of the True Presence of Our Lord.”

Eucharistic Miracles are reminders of what it is we place our faith in, what is ordinarily miraculous, what transcends feeble human reason, and stuns skepticism: the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

Photo by Jacob Bentzinger on Unsplash